Speaker 1: Bushkin. Hey everybody, it's me W Cambell. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: my podcast, Who's with Me? Episode twelve, featuring today's guest
Speaker 1: open Mike Eagle, rapper and Twitch streamer and good talker.
Speaker 1: I really admire people who know how to keep the
Speaker 1: ball up in the air. Mike streams on Twitch. You'll
Speaker 1: follow him on Twitch. I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know what it is, but I don't
Speaker 1: know how to follow people there. But he's really good
Speaker 1: at keeping the ball up in the air. This is
Speaker 1: a great conversation. You might notice that I'm sort of
Speaker 1: excited at the beginning because I hadn't really had a
Speaker 1: conversation with Mike before.
Speaker 2: I know, he said a lot.
Speaker 1: But Mike and somebody I have just sort of known
Speaker 1: perfetly through the years and always admired him. And also
Speaker 1: whenever I'm around black men who I feel like we
Speaker 1: have sort of a common background, don't you know. I
Speaker 1: have not been around a ton of those types of
Speaker 1: black dudes in my life, I mean more as an adult.
Speaker 1: But whenever I'm around black dudes are I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you kind of grew up like me not to be
Speaker 1: in my group. The same way, but we do have
Speaker 1: some common similarities In there, I get a little bit
Speaker 1: too excited. So I was a little bit too excited
Speaker 1: in this episode at someone. I had to be like,
Speaker 1: calm down, Jamal. Jamal's what I call myself when I'm
Speaker 1: criticizing myself. Nothing, there's anything wrong with the name Jamal.
Speaker 1: I've really gone off the track. Anyway, Before we get
Speaker 1: too deep into this stand up comedy dates, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do this off top of my head September twenty fifth
Speaker 1: and twenty six in Stamford, Connecticut at the New York
Speaker 1: Comedy Club. October first at Stanford University at the Stanford
Speaker 1: Memorial Theater, and then November thirteenth in Bellingham, Washington at
Speaker 1: the Mount Baker Theater. Get your tickets at wcmal Bell
Speaker 1: dot com or Google however you want to do it.
Speaker 1: Tickets still available. Please get your tickets so I can
Speaker 1: still keep doing stand up comedy. Also hoping that people
Speaker 1: who listen to the podcast also comes to me do
Speaker 1: stand up. Maybe there's new people who were just meeting
Speaker 1: me through this comes to me, you stand up. I
Speaker 1: hope that's true. So here's the thing. Everybody my opinions
Speaker 1: sometimes get me into a little bit of a Internet controversy,
Speaker 1: as to say hot water.
Speaker 2: It's not real hot water, it's just Internet controversy.
Speaker 1: And you know, some of the stuff has happened through
Speaker 1: the podcast, also through my substack, which is also named
Speaker 1: pos with Me, you know, or just sometimes I get
Speaker 1: you know, my opinions are what I do gets me
Speaker 1: a lot of extra attention, Like through the podcast. That
Speaker 1: Ted Danson interview that was the second episode got a
Speaker 1: lot of attention, which means I had a lot of
Speaker 1: people on my ig and my Instagram at w Combbell
Speaker 1: with a lot of opinions about ted Danson apologizing for blackface.
Speaker 2: So I, you know, stand by that episode.
Speaker 1: But then also sort of around that same time, I
Speaker 1: mean we've talked about a lot of the podcast, just
Speaker 1: a lot of like uh, Kevin Hart Roast talk that
Speaker 1: sort of just as we were recording the episodes that
Speaker 1: was out in the out in the world. Then I
Speaker 1: wrote a big substack about it. I declared that the
Speaker 1: Roast was dead, and I just didn't know that that
Speaker 1: was a big deal, but people maybe because I'm a comedian,
Speaker 1: but you know, as many people pointed out Michael Harriet,
Speaker 1: the great Michael Harriet, who you can also find on
Speaker 1: substack and also out in the world, point out that
Speaker 1: ross aren't really a significant part of stand up comedy.
Speaker 1: They're just a thing that happens. But somehow stand up
Speaker 1: comedians who do rosa acted like it's a part of
Speaker 1: the tradition that we need. And so that got me
Speaker 1: into a lot of like hot water with the Rogan sphere,
Speaker 1: the comedians and the and the people who are fans
Speaker 1: of that. I mean again, not hot water, because I
Speaker 1: stand by what I said, so the water doesn't feel
Speaker 1: that hot.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 1: Look, I just thought it wasn't a good look for
Speaker 1: Nate Barghetzi to be at the UFC event on the
Speaker 1: White House lawn. I didn't think it was a good
Speaker 1: look for anybody. But you know, it was my choice
Speaker 1: to talk about Nate Barghesti, who's a comedian who, like
Speaker 1: I think I've met him once or twice.
Speaker 2: No, I know I've met him once or twice.
Speaker 1: And again, it's not even about me criticizing him a
Speaker 1: little bit. It's about that, but it's also just about,
Speaker 1: hey man, that's not a good look, even if you
Speaker 1: are if you're trying to sell you know, arenas what
Speaker 1: you are and you're trying to open amusement parks.
Speaker 2: Maybe you don't do that.
Speaker 1: But people really took that to heart, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: I felt like I turned on comedy. I've heard, you know,
Speaker 1: I've heard some comedians we're not happy about me. Actually
Speaker 1: stumbled across one the other day on Instagram. Who's like
Speaker 1: calling Nate Barghetti a fascist is like calling w com
Speaker 1: Out Bell a comedian. And I just thought, ah, you
Speaker 1: need better writers. Yeah, I am a comedian, and we
Speaker 1: come in all shapes and sizes and flavors. And I'm
Speaker 1: very clear of the tradition of comedy. I walk in
Speaker 1: and just because your comedian does't mean you're funny to everybody.
Speaker 1: That's not That's just how it works. So I'm not
Speaker 1: here trying to like act like I don't think it's
Speaker 1: comedy is about just about how many tickets you sell,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, And it'll be clear, do whatever kind
Speaker 1: of comedy you want to do.
Speaker 2: It's just, you know, and I have opinions about it. Anyway.
Speaker 1: People had feeling especially again comics had feelings about it.
Speaker 2: And then Leslie Jones was on the podcast.
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks ago, and man, we put out
Speaker 1: a clip that episode where she was really just she
Speaker 1: was talking about Ghostbusters, but then she started preaching about
Speaker 1: why are you so upset that women are in a
Speaker 1: Ghostbusters movie? And then it went to don't you think
Speaker 1: writers want their writings to be reinterpreted? Like Shakespeare and
Speaker 1: Charles Dickens, And then it ended on God created a
Speaker 1: little bit of everything, so we should just be prepared
Speaker 1: for whatever the world has for us. And it was
Speaker 1: just beautiful. It was a beautiful, like inspiring, well put
Speaker 1: together rant that also just felt like, like I said,
Speaker 1: it felt like she was preaching. And man, so many
Speaker 1: people we posted that thing up on ig Ig seems
Speaker 1: to be the new hub of the trolls.
Speaker 2: I think they all left Twitter because Twitter got boring,
Speaker 2: so they've.
Speaker 1: Sort of moved to ig a little bit to threads too,
Speaker 1: But so many internet trolls were just like Ghostbusters was bad,
Speaker 1: the all women Ghostbusters was bad. And some people were
Speaker 1: like it was like treated the original Ghostbuster movies like
Speaker 1: it was somehow a sacred text, like it was like
Speaker 1: she had somehow like she had her and the women
Speaker 1: who are in Ghostbusters that somehow like mess with one
Speaker 1: of the sacred texts of humanity. And you know, my
Speaker 1: favorite response to someone's like, you know, Ghostbusters two sucked, right,
Speaker 1: Like we all think that Ghostbusters too with the dudes
Speaker 1: was not a good movie, Like it has the Bobby
Speaker 1: Brown song, but that's about it.
Speaker 2: So like and and here's the other part.
Speaker 1: It was. My ig comvers section was also flooded with
Speaker 1: people who were like, oh my god, the Ghostbusters all women.
Speaker 1: Ghostbusters is my favorite, because of course, because that's how
Speaker 1: it works. Parents were like I showed it to my daughter,
Speaker 1: or people were like, I never got into the original.
Speaker 1: Because of course people liked it. Just because the movie
Speaker 1: again didn't make a ton of money and I don't
Speaker 1: know how much money made or wasn't a critical hit
Speaker 1: doesn't mean people are gonna like, aren't gonna like love
Speaker 1: it or like it like it's so funny. I'm old
Speaker 1: now to see things go from like eh to like oh,
Speaker 1: like I hate to tell you all this, but like
Speaker 1: lots of things I've seen in my life go from
Speaker 1: like ah to like, oh we like that now, nostalgia
Speaker 1: we like that, or oh we've had a chance to
Speaker 1: sit with this and we like it.
Speaker 2: That's the whole idea behind a cult movie.
Speaker 1: It's a movie that like, originally was ignored and then
Speaker 1: people really found value it and we all understand that
Speaker 1: when it's our cult movie. You know, they just made
Speaker 1: shout out to the Waynes brother Jes just made another
Speaker 1: scary movie. And those those first scary movies, they weren't
Speaker 1: like monster, huge mega hits. It's just the people who
Speaker 1: liked them liked them, and they were never really reviewed
Speaker 1: all that well.
Speaker 2: And this is not me, this is about how things
Speaker 2: are reviewed.
Speaker 1: And guess what. Eventually, some people are like, we want
Speaker 1: another scary movie, and the waves were like, would you
Speaker 1: like another scary movie? And they're like, yeah, we would,
Speaker 1: and they made another one and it was It's made
Speaker 1: over one hundred million dollars, and guess what, it still
Speaker 1: didn't get great reviews everywhere. Just because the culture has
Speaker 1: scare culls doesn't like something doesn't mean that that are
Speaker 1: there are people who like it. And I think you
Speaker 1: see it with black stuff all the time. You see
Speaker 1: it with anything that's not appealing to straight white men,
Speaker 1: you know. And so the all women Ghostbusters just also
Speaker 1: came out at a time when the alt right internet
Speaker 1: that later became the Manisphere, and Maga was really starting
Speaker 1: to like feel itself. So like the ben Shapiros and
Speaker 1: the mileu Ianopolises really were like felt like they finally
Speaker 1: were being black, see what would happen?
Speaker 2: They were feeling themselves well, so.
Speaker 1: They were being u astro tarrifted by billionaires so they
Speaker 1: could take a lot of space on the internet. They
Speaker 1: were really feeling themselves really, and so Miley the Anapolis
Speaker 1: made it his point to like take down Leslie specifically,
Speaker 1: like of course, because she was the one black person
Speaker 1: in the movie The Black Woman, and really like like
Speaker 1: like she was doxed, she was harassed, and there's a
Speaker 1: version of Leslie Jones that never recovers from that, because
Speaker 1: that happens to people when you go through some shit
Speaker 1: on the you know, through in the public eye, where
Speaker 1: you just are you are, You're never the same. But
Speaker 1: the thing you could see from my interview with Leslie
Speaker 1: Jones that she is just as loud and proud and abuliant.
Speaker 1: I think I'm saying that, well, can somebody let me
Speaker 1: know abuliant as she ever was? And she's not tripping.
Speaker 1: But it was so funny to me that there's just
Speaker 1: an aspect of kind of person mostly dudes who just
Speaker 1: want to argue on the thing they care about, not
Speaker 1: about like it's okay that a woman to go expressors exist,
Speaker 1: it's about I didn't like it. Okay, a lot of
Speaker 1: people did, but I didn't like it. Okay, a lot
Speaker 1: of people did, but I didn't like it. Years ago,
Speaker 1: I remember this was when the Vagina Monologues was big.
Speaker 1: I went to see like a production of Vagina Monologues
Speaker 1: with my then girlfriend future wife, and afterwards, I remember
Speaker 1: she asked me my opinion and I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know that I'm supposed to have And at the time,
Speaker 1: I don't think I phrased it well, but what I
Speaker 1: was really saying was like, I don't think that was
Speaker 1: for me, and I'm okay with that, Like because I
Speaker 1: felt like I don't know what I would say about it.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't sound like I was somehow trying to push
Speaker 1: the Vagina logs through my man brain and make it
Speaker 1: make sense in a way that it's like, I don't
Speaker 1: think that that was written for me to understand it,
Speaker 1: And that's fine, that's fine.
Speaker 2: You see it in music all the time.
Speaker 1: I remember I used to be a young person who's like,
Speaker 1: pop music is bad, boy bands are bad just because
Speaker 1: they weren't the music I liked, And you realize, what
Speaker 1: are you doing?
Speaker 2: Let people enjoy their.
Speaker 1: Thing unless you have something to say, like something to
Speaker 1: say about like I don't like how Justin Timberlake treated
Speaker 1: Janet Jackson after the super Bowl, and he also happens
Speaker 1: to be in a boy band, but not like just
Speaker 1: I don't like that whole thing. So men get caught
Speaker 1: up in their opinions, and then they want to share
Speaker 1: their opinions. And so I ended up fighting the comments
Speaker 1: slot on ig go to my itg at Wombell, not fighting,
Speaker 1: but just really like making it clear that like I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna hear I'm not gonna let you just do that.
Speaker 1: So anyway, having said that, I also spend more time
Speaker 1: on the comments on YouTube. I'm reading them, but I'm
Speaker 1: not engaging because I just I've been I've spent so
Speaker 1: much in my life being a lurker on YouTube that
Speaker 1: it's hard to like actually leave comments.
Speaker 2: But I'll start leaving comments on these videos. I make that.
Speaker 1: I claim that today, So look for me in the
Speaker 1: comments on the YouTube videos. Also, I can subscribe and
Speaker 1: hype do all the things and uh next my conversation
Speaker 1: with open Mic Eagle. I just like to do it
Speaker 1: a lot, and I enjoyed talking to him. Hope to
Speaker 1: talk to him some more. We talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about how he came and saw Fishbone with me in
Speaker 1: La when they performed at the Garami Museum.
Speaker 2: Shout out to Fishbone, Fishbone.
Speaker 1: But that was the most we'd ever really hung out,
Speaker 1: although he does remind me that I did his podcast
Speaker 1: at one point, which I was like, I'd totally forgotten about,
Speaker 1: because the we'll talk about why've forgotten about? Nothing against him,
Speaker 1: just about mostly against where I was in my life
Speaker 1: at that point. He is always on tour. You can
Speaker 1: check him out his I didn't notice. He has a
Speaker 1: new album coming out. His last album that is out now,
Speaker 1: called Neighborhood Gods Unlimited is out right now, and then
Speaker 1: his next album, which releases very shortly after you hear this,
Speaker 1: is called Doomed and it releases on August thirteenth. So yeah,
Speaker 1: great to have open Mic Eagle on. You can see
Speaker 1: at the beginning I like him so much, I'm actually
Speaker 1: acting weird, so I settled down eventually, But yeah, shout
Speaker 1: out to Open My Eagle. Also check out his podcast
Speaker 1: with Anna Marie Cox called Past Do. Check him out
Speaker 1: on Twitch. He's on social media. He's on YouTube. Check
Speaker 1: him out here. If you're on YouTube, he posts things
Speaker 1: on YouTube where he just talks about things in the
Speaker 1: culture's interested in.
Speaker 2: He's just a one stop shop and he's great anyway. Enjoy.
Speaker 3: Hey, thanks for watching an episode of Who's with Me.
Speaker 3: If you're on YouTube, please like and subscribe, share, hit
Speaker 3: the hype button. I hear it makes all the difference.
Speaker 3: Please like, subscribe, share, hit the hype button. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you I'm five ten. Really, people you carry
Speaker 1: yourself taller than that.
Speaker 4: Oh that's good. That's the years of practice. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 4: they got a big old I.
Speaker 2: Was definitely like this.
Speaker 1: I think also people carry themselves taller and shorter. That
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with their height. Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: will literally people have known for years will not see
Speaker 1: me for a little while, and I will see them like, man,
Speaker 1: come on, when'd you get so tall? Like you're still growing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's just like I don't walk around like
Speaker 1: you don't. People on top of the head a lot.
Speaker 1: Now you should probably do it. Like once a year,
Speaker 1: just to let people. Don't lift people up and go
Speaker 1: look at you down there, look at you, hey, Tom Cruise,
Speaker 1: put me down. It's not the way you get Movie
Speaker 1: roles haven't done any of the Mission Impossible movies because
Speaker 1: I picked him up the first time I met him.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so I think. But anyway, so anyway, the
Speaker 1: first thing I want to say is you are You're
Speaker 1: not as tall as I thought you were. Okay, well
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 4: I'm going to be spending the rest of our conversation
Speaker 4: processing that.
Speaker 1: It makes me feel so many ways. It once all
Speaker 1: right for real though, thank you for doing this, Thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. No, I appreciate thank you for.
Speaker 4: Being willing to talk to people less famous than Ted Dancing.
Speaker 4: That's really nice to you. You don't have to do that.
Speaker 4: You could be Ted dancing.
Speaker 1: Or that's the bar, that's the bar. Good. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Yeah, well, well I appreciate you appreciating that.
Speaker 1: I have to say, it's not exactly what I thought
Speaker 1: about this, like what's the bar? But I do like
Speaker 1: thinking that, like it's it is it between you two? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 4: I would not like to think of myself as the
Speaker 4: low bar.
Speaker 1: No, You're not the low bar. So then I'm just
Speaker 1: saying that's the bar. I'm not saying. Yeah, No, I
Speaker 1: will go lower than you. I promise over the course
Speaker 1: of this podcast, I will go much lower than Mike.
Speaker 1: I think I really love it if we change the subject.
Speaker 1: Really cool, Do you do that? No? I do actually
Speaker 1: want to start this with start every episode giving people
Speaker 1: their flowers. Oh I like flowers, so let's do that,
Speaker 1: because what we just did was not that. So that's
Speaker 1: not what I meant to do. It's just I get
Speaker 1: caught up in things. I so I don't remember. I
Speaker 1: know we met around the time I was on Totally Biased,
Speaker 1: that I visited you in the office while you guys
Speaker 1: were in production.
Speaker 2: I know, I don't remember it because I was crazy then.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It was a wild time. Yeah, it was a wild time.
Speaker 4: I think I was friends with a lot of people
Speaker 4: on your staff at that time too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think I can think also the connection
Speaker 1: game through Hannibal maybe probably.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, why can't I remember her name right now?
Speaker 4: But she was a writer on your show who I
Speaker 4: was working a lot with in LA at the time,
Speaker 4: Eliza Skinner. Yes, yes, Yeah, shout out to Eliza Skinner,
Speaker 4: She's yeah, I believe she was very instrumental in mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now, I remember like at the time being like, oh,
Speaker 1: that guy's he seems good, and my whole thing was like,
Speaker 1: how do I make the show better? Can that guy
Speaker 1: be on the show, but then never being able to
Speaker 1: grab all the pieces.
Speaker 4: You want to You had a lot you were trying
Speaker 4: to do. I think this was right after it went
Speaker 4: like five nights a week or something, so it was
Speaker 4: nutty in there. I remember it was nuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It is a defining part of my life of like,
Speaker 1: I don't ever want to do show biz like that again.
Speaker 1: I understand.
Speaker 4: I also, so shortly after you had that show, I
Speaker 4: had my show, The New Negroes, which is another experience
Speaker 4: that I don't want to have another one like that again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this brings me Pier two flowers. There's a
Speaker 1: way in which I see you out in the world
Speaker 1: very fiercely doing what you want to do the way
Speaker 1: you want to do it. And I know, and I
Speaker 1: think I told you this, I think I did it.
Speaker 1: But like when I would and saw you live open
Speaker 1: for clipping recently in Berkeley, and I was telling my wife,
Speaker 1: and she wasn't familiar with your music, and I was like,
Speaker 1: do you remember what I told you? I said to her,
Speaker 1: I do remember what you said?
Speaker 4: You said, He's like, if he's like me, if I
Speaker 4: wrapped talking about yourself.
Speaker 1: I mean as a way to sort of communicate what
Speaker 1: kind of wrap she was getting into, that's a really
Speaker 1: smart way to do it. Yeah, I mean it's you know,
Speaker 1: even whether it's true or not, it certainly she was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I get it. And then I don't think I would
Speaker 1: be like you if I was a rapper, but I
Speaker 1: do think that I would be taking an alternate path.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, so it wasn't about how you did, it
Speaker 1: was about that's the path you take. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think it's about the spirit of the thing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, I think I think we approached things with
Speaker 4: a similar spirit.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so I really having seen you since Toty biased
Speaker 1: and having seen you just clearly like I'm over here.
Speaker 1: Think about that, like I'm over here, I know everything. No,
Speaker 1: there's a lot over there, so much over There's so
Speaker 1: much over there. It's like they're having so much fun.
Speaker 2: They claim to have a lot of fun over there.
Speaker 1: There's lots, but I'm over here, and I know being
Speaker 1: a person who's also over here. You know, I live
Speaker 1: in Oakland, which is even more like I'm over here,
Speaker 1: which is a version of ib over here because I'm
Speaker 1: not in LA or New York, but just the idea
Speaker 1: of like how how hard that is to always be
Speaker 1: over there, but also ultimately there's satisfaction in being over
Speaker 1: there because you're very clear where you're supposed to be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And what I find about myself is, you know,
Speaker 4: I live in LA, but I'm still over there. Exactly
Speaker 4: when I go to New York, I'm still over there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4: So it's like it's it's it's a it's a sort
Speaker 4: of spiritual geography that I take with me kind of
Speaker 4: wherever I go. And you know, I might be at
Speaker 4: a party with a bunch of people who are not
Speaker 4: over there, but even when I'm over there, yeah, I'm
Speaker 4: over there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even at that party, you're probably in the room
Speaker 1: at that party that's the over there room. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I am the room in there.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: I think I was born over there, and so I
Speaker 1: sort of knew from a early age. I can't get
Speaker 1: I can't get there. I'm over you know, I can't
Speaker 1: get here. I'm mixing up the metaphors. But yeah, but anyway,
Speaker 1: I knew that there was a place where everybody was
Speaker 1: coagulating and assembling and I maybe get close, but I
Speaker 1: knew that I don't belong with those people. Not that
Speaker 1: I can't enjoy myself sometimes, not that I don't enjoy
Speaker 1: some of what comes out of that, but like you know,
Speaker 1: I was very aware that, like that's not for me,
Speaker 1: and so early on I was like, so I got
Speaker 1: to stop even pretending like I'm going that way.
Speaker 2: You know, was it the same for you or were you?
Speaker 1: Were you with all the people and then you left
Speaker 1: or were you always like the outside the party?
Speaker 4: I was with all of the people because there was
Speaker 4: a point in my life where the people is all
Speaker 4: I knew. So I knew, I knew how to speak people,
Speaker 4: so so I could move around, okay, But I always
Speaker 4: felt a little off right. It was really It wasn't
Speaker 4: really until I discovered like the underground hip hop community
Speaker 4: in Chicago, like the dudes who was breakdancing, graffiti and
Speaker 4: DJing and freestyle. And when I found this group of
Speaker 4: people and I found the the real meritocracy of that too.
Speaker 4: It was like, Oh, I can just be over here
Speaker 4: with people who like music that I like, and if
Speaker 4: I practice and apply myself to getting good at these
Speaker 4: weird activities that we all seem to love doing, then
Speaker 4: I got a little thing for myself and I can
Speaker 4: feel I can build a sense of selfhood based on
Speaker 4: my accomplishments and my dedication to these arts. And that's
Speaker 4: when my my over thereness felt really complete.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it sounds like you weren't kid who grew
Speaker 1: up saying I Am going to grow up and be
Speaker 1: a rapper.
Speaker 4: No, Okay, I was. I used to be kind of
Speaker 4: scared of rap music when I was a little kid.
Speaker 1: I mean, so I'm a little bit older than you,
Speaker 1: so I have I have the entire like rap from
Speaker 1: like the no rap, a little bit of rap, a
Speaker 1: few rap, you know what I mean. So I had
Speaker 1: the whole soul, so I can understand. I was born
Speaker 1: and was around yeah see yeah, no, I was. I'm
Speaker 1: like seven years older than you. So I remember like
Speaker 1: the radio and being like I said hip hop and
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, what did he say? A hip hop?
Speaker 1: Heady to the heavy to hip hop? Is that what
Speaker 1: he that seems different? You know, Like I remember that
Speaker 1: moment when that was like a like a like a
Speaker 1: sea change, and I remember like, oh, Curtis Plow was
Speaker 1: fun and run DMC is fun. And then slowly but
Speaker 1: surely I was, I was. I was thinking about this
Speaker 1: as I was going to talk to you, Like I
Speaker 1: remember when rap was a fad, and when rap was
Speaker 1: like rap is for for musicians who don't know how
Speaker 1: to sing. That was a famous Like a lot of
Speaker 1: people still feel that way. Sure, I think they're probably
Speaker 1: they're they're not. They're not They're not at either party.
Speaker 1: They're the manisphere. But like, so what, so talk about
Speaker 1: your version of what you when you grew up.
Speaker 4: So the first rap song I ever heard in my life,
Speaker 4: I got in the car with my mom and she
Speaker 4: was playing easy so I had to I couldn't have
Speaker 4: been older than eight. That was seven or eight years ye,
Speaker 4: that's late eighties. Yeah, and I guess I must have
Speaker 4: heard some rap, but like, this is the first time
Speaker 4: I remember like listening to what a rapper was saying
Speaker 4: and I was so confused, Yeah, because it was like
Speaker 4: he's saying these words, am.
Speaker 1: I supposed to be hearing these words, Why is my
Speaker 1: mother playing this?
Speaker 2: Is this a test?
Speaker 4: Like, I no no way to wrap my head around it.
Speaker 4: And he sounded so interesting to me. He sounded like
Speaker 4: a little cartoon character talking about doing violent crimes. It
Speaker 4: really was something and the theater of the mind that
Speaker 4: started happening. I was like, Wow, this is really something else.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 4: I have an older step sibling who was four or
Speaker 4: five years older than me but a huge hip hop head,
Speaker 4: so coming and spending summers with her, coming to visit.
Speaker 4: My dad just just had every tape you could think of,
Speaker 4: had everything.
Speaker 1: And so this is eighty seven, eighty eight, I mean
Speaker 1: this is still like there's still debate about is rap
Speaker 1: a real thing? What we're like ello cool j.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean we're into slick Rick, Rockham, Big Daddy Kane,
Speaker 4: Like that's the stuff that's really popping at the time.
Speaker 4: You know, bismarcky is uh is big, and n w
Speaker 4: A is huge public enemy. So like that's the world
Speaker 4: around me. And I found a lot of it really scary.
Speaker 4: Like I like slick Rick, I like Kwame, you know,
Speaker 4: like that was cute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I liked the little.
Speaker 4: Story raps and all that stuff, but even slick Rick,
Speaker 4: slick Rick used to say some disgusting things grabs with
Speaker 4: spears and Indian drums. What what to put that visual
Speaker 4: in my mind?
Speaker 2: I was not years old.
Speaker 1: God.
Speaker 2: The one thing I know from that story is we
Speaker 2: had different momsh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I did not have I had a very different
Speaker 4: type of mom than most people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And when she's playing easy in the car, is she like, oh,
Speaker 1: is there any awareness in her mind? Is like this
Speaker 1: he shouldn't be hearing this and none, just just I
Speaker 1: want to hear this song. I want to hear the
Speaker 1: song in the Nissan. Yeah. And if he needs to
Speaker 1: go to school, so these things will happen simultaneous, yes,
Speaker 1: without Nia's second thought.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting because again, sort of just to talk
Speaker 1: about By the time NWA comes around, I'm very clear
Speaker 1: that like, I like rap music, but it's not speaking
Speaker 1: to me. I'm not I don't have anything against it,
Speaker 1: especially because I feel like, and I would love to
Speaker 1: hear your talk about this because you were still young.
Speaker 2: But I'm sure you've looked back in this time.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing arrested development and concert like I remember
Speaker 1: diggable planets to be like, oh I like this this version,
Speaker 1: and then at some point the Red Company said that's
Speaker 1: enough of that. Well I think about that a lot.
Speaker 1: Like so I felt like there was rap that I
Speaker 1: was responding to, and the and the main streets like
Speaker 1: we don't like the.
Speaker 2: Fact that come out like this wrap.
Speaker 1: No, that's not what happened. It wasn't okay, everything's not
Speaker 1: about you.
Speaker 2: It was a very personal attack.
Speaker 4: But so I had that awakening when I first heard
Speaker 4: you know, Tribe, Yeah, I mean know like Dita Apple
Speaker 4: Bom was big. Seeing a video for Buddy from Day last,
Speaker 4: so that was huge. It's like all of these.
Speaker 1: Afrocentric clothing wearing people. It seemed to be really like
Speaker 1: getting along and having fun and quirky, yeah, like weird,
Speaker 1: and they were putting that forward in a way that
Speaker 1: like when I first heard that music and saw that
Speaker 1: esthetic in that atmosphere, that was the first time I
Speaker 1: felt like I had a seat at the table. So
Speaker 1: by the time I'm getting into rap as a as
Speaker 1: a teenager, I feel like I'm fruit from that tree.
Speaker 1: I'm fruit from the native tongue's tree.
Speaker 4: So tried Daylight. Leaders of the New school like that
Speaker 4: whole energy. And so what ended up happening, though, is
Speaker 4: that those of us who were over there, and especially
Speaker 4: those of us who like me, discovered wrap and breaking
Speaker 4: graffiti DJ, and around the time when we were laid
Speaker 4: into our high school years, a thing called the Internet happened.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 4: There became yeah, you got it, it's very important, it's
Speaker 4: very important. There became this this easy way to get music.
Speaker 4: I remember we were crate diggers. We used to go
Speaker 4: to the dusty record shops and try to find the
Speaker 4: second hand But all of a sudden, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: you mean there's this application I can put on And
Speaker 4: I don't have a personal computer, but I know one guy,
Speaker 4: one guy in the dorn does. Under one guy, he
Speaker 4: wasn't afraid to have his hard drive compromise with all
Speaker 4: of this potentially virus filled music. So the reason that
Speaker 4: there used to beat music that we liked was that
Speaker 4: there were enough of us buying that music that the
Speaker 4: major labels were able to put a line in the
Speaker 4: budget to make this alternative bohemian rap music and give
Speaker 4: them big videos and put them in Tower Records next
Speaker 4: to everything else. But we were the first ones to
Speaker 4: stop buying and when we stopped buying it, that whole
Speaker 4: thing collapse and it no longer it was no longer
Speaker 4: a good idea for the record labels to have that
Speaker 4: because we weren't paying for it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've heard those stories about like about like
Speaker 1: trib Call Quests first album went platinum on the streets
Speaker 1: but not in the record stores, like leg yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, there was a legacy of that anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that there was like everybody had that album, but not
Speaker 1: everybody got it from going to the record store. You
Speaker 1: know what.
Speaker 4: That makes a lot of sense. And again, you know,
Speaker 4: when you're speaking to a particular population that is not
Speaker 4: always the best about following the rules.
Speaker 1: Well also has been like it's like feels like the
Speaker 1: rules aren't for them anyway, you know.
Speaker 4: But that's sort of how we don't understand our own
Speaker 4: place in the economy by following that logic that way.
Speaker 4: And I you know, and I'm it's guilty as anyone else.
Speaker 4: It's just that when I got into the business of it,
Speaker 4: Oh now I can kind of see it, like, oh right,
Speaker 4: like if me and my friends had kept paying for
Speaker 4: those you know, the Daylight sol albums that came out
Speaker 4: after stakes was high, then maybe we're in a different place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm so loath to blame us.
Speaker 4: I just you know, I the way that my mind
Speaker 4: is operating lately is that most of the boogeymen are
Speaker 4: just you know, capitalism and a cheap Scooby Doo villain suit. Yes,
Speaker 4: so so you know, looking at it through that lens,
Speaker 4: it's like, oh, yeah, okay, our money comes out, we
Speaker 4: stop having the thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it is. I agree,
Speaker 1: that's how the ultimate villain. I used that with United Shades, like,
Speaker 1: no matter what issue we were covering, racism, it just
Speaker 1: just rights, immigration, rights at the border. The ultimate villain
Speaker 1: was capitalist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was American capitalist usually.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So you said, like you said, you didn't
Speaker 1: grow up on Sally want to be a rapper. But
Speaker 1: then you're like hanging out in the scene and be like,
Speaker 1: oh I think I could actually be a do something
Speaker 1: in the scene and creating the scene. Are you always
Speaker 1: headed down?
Speaker 2: You know? And I please, I want to know what
Speaker 2: you call what you do?
Speaker 1: You know, I called it art wrap in twenty ten
Speaker 1: and I still get asked about that all the time.
Speaker 1: It was in the it's in the it's in the
Speaker 1: DOSSI And I was like, is that really? I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know, sure, baby, but I know I didn't
Speaker 1: say it for it. I would ask you.
Speaker 4: I know, my first album it's called Unapologetic art Rap.
Speaker 1: So you did to yourself?
Speaker 2: I did? I did you put it in the system?
Speaker 1: I did?
Speaker 4: But you know that was a different time. It felt
Speaker 4: necessary to say something like that at that time.
Speaker 1: Well sure, it's like it's yeah, it's like the idea
Speaker 1: of like there's a time where I was calling myself
Speaker 1: a blurred every ten minutes. You actually around time totally bias.
Speaker 1: When somebody called me a blurred, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: is that what I am? Right, I'm glad there's a
Speaker 1: name for it.
Speaker 4: Right before, there are important. I feel like they're important
Speaker 4: for the marketplace, important to have distinctions. So you know,
Speaker 4: I went with that because I feel like, you know.
Speaker 1: Rockets to have all these different sub genres. I really
Speaker 1: agree with what you're saying, Like, yeah, like that it
Speaker 1: is helpful to the marketplace, and it's helpful to the consumer.
Speaker 1: You know, what am I going to?
Speaker 2: What am I? Where do I look for it? Where's
Speaker 2: my section?
Speaker 1: Right? Like the people like me and you who would
Speaker 1: have been looking for the Diggaboo Planets record, Like it
Speaker 1: would be nice if there was a separate Bend Nerds.
Speaker 4: Now, I feel like the distinction, like Indy seems cool
Speaker 4: because Indye speaks to both the economics of it and my.
Speaker 1: The fact I don't have to answer to anybody really creatively.
Speaker 1: I feel like, so Indy feels good.
Speaker 4: It doesn't feel quite specific enough, yeah, but it feels
Speaker 4: like it's on the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's like I mean, it's sort of in that
Speaker 1: sense like punk rock covers a lot of different sort
Speaker 1: of like sounds in that genre of music that you
Speaker 1: can get the clash which has some very like pop
Speaker 1: forward music, but the ethos is punk.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I get that indie rap. So were you
Speaker 1: always on an indie rap path or was there are
Speaker 1: there polaroids of you, like you know.
Speaker 2: Where you were?
Speaker 1: Like, No, I never had a doukie rope like where
Speaker 1: you're like, this is what we do? You know? No, man,
Speaker 1: you were always in the indie rap path. I mean
Speaker 1: when when we say you know about you or about me,
Speaker 1: that I always knew I was over there, Like that's
Speaker 1: really what I mean, Like there was never a thought
Speaker 1: in my mind of doing anything even close to mainstream.
Speaker 1: It just has never been interesting to me, and I
Speaker 1: don't I don't think I'm wired in a way where
Speaker 1: i'd be.
Speaker 4: Even if I really tried really hard, I think it
Speaker 4: would be difficult for me to make a mass market product.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's that's hard. It's like, you could give
Speaker 1: me the pieces to make a mask mark you get
Speaker 1: like it's like legos. You could give me the pieces,
Speaker 1: you give me instructions. It's not gonna look like gonna
Speaker 1: look like that.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna look the gonna be on the bottom, you
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying, It's gonna have some jelly smeared
Speaker 4: on it or something.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 1: It's just not gonna and and accepting that, I think,
Speaker 1: especially when you're there's something scared about, especially a black person,
Speaker 1: when you accept that, cause it's like you're just getting in,
Speaker 1: You're putting yourself in a smaller and smaller corner that
Speaker 1: you know as a white person. Oh you're the quirky
Speaker 1: white you know what I mean. There's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a whole we can market to that, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like like there's a whole there's a
Speaker 1: whole genre like what you're Wes Anderson, right, oh.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, well we just got out here, you know,
Speaker 2: over here with that. But it was a black person.
Speaker 2: Especially when I was coming up.
Speaker 1: I always say that the thing that you had, which
Speaker 1: I'm gonna look into the internet, I was very aware that, like,
Speaker 1: if I had only had the Internet, I thought I
Speaker 1: was the only one on the planet.
Speaker 2: I thought I was the like I would go to
Speaker 2: And we've talked.
Speaker 1: About this, because you came to the Fishbone show that
Speaker 1: I got to moderate the thing, and I would know
Speaker 1: the Fishbone concert there'd be more black people on stage
Speaker 1: than in the in the in the play, in the theater,
Speaker 1: and you'd see another black guy cross the room and
Speaker 1: there'd be that moment and I wonder if you've had
Speaker 1: this where you're like, is he my best friend? Or
Speaker 1: do I have to fight it? You know what's funny.
Speaker 1: You know my favorite band is they might be giants?
Speaker 2: Yes, you made that clear at the show, the Clippic Show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh god, I did. I thought that was great.
Speaker 1: Oh man, it was for for the people who are
Speaker 1: watching this every you said for somehow you had that
Speaker 1: they might be giants stuck in your head somehow, I
Speaker 1: can't remember how we got to this moment, came out
Speaker 1: and said, well, this is this is what happened because
Speaker 1: every show on that tour, and this was legitimate. I
Speaker 1: had created a set, but I could not decide on
Speaker 1: the first song. So I was letting the crowd in
Speaker 1: each show just like, you know, yell something you like
Speaker 1: that I do, and I might do that as my
Speaker 1: first song. And that night it.
Speaker 4: Went on a little too long with people sort of
Speaker 4: shouting out things that I couldn't quite hear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then somebody said saying they might be giants,
Speaker 1: and I was like, wait a minute, I can do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was I sort of knew that it
Speaker 1: wasn't a bit, but I felt like he should really
Speaker 1: do that. He should really like, yeah, there's a day
Speaker 1: might be giants cover album in you? Oh God? Yes,
Speaker 1: that like that? To me, it was like and it
Speaker 1: was so satisfying to me because they might look they
Speaker 1: might be giants, great, but I feel like it's like
Speaker 1: my like, there's things like that that are that it's
Speaker 1: ostensibly to some people are super white, but I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm that's mine too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 4: But I've had that experience at they might be giant
Speaker 4: shows where I see another black person. I feel like
Speaker 4: I've had both sides of that spectrum, both like, Hey,
Speaker 4: that's dope and the others like if.
Speaker 1: We're allowed to be close to each other, does the
Speaker 1: venue explode? So the two indie black guys get too
Speaker 1: close to each other. I mean there's literally a black guy.
Speaker 1: There's Billy Tuggle, who I've never had a conversation with
Speaker 1: longer than like ten minutes, and he's just a black guy.
Speaker 1: Used to see it all the Fishbonel Living Color shows
Speaker 1: in Chicago, and we're like he just commented on an
Speaker 1: Instagram post I had recently. I was like, ah, like
Speaker 1: I've never had a long conversation with the guy because
Speaker 1: at the time when I would see him, I would be.
Speaker 2: Like, that guy's here again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope he's okay. Hope he's okay that I'm
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, instead of like if the
Speaker 1: internet existed, we would have found each other on the internet. Hey,
Speaker 1: who here in Chicago's going to see Living Color tonight
Speaker 1: and I am, and we would have gone together and
Speaker 1: we would have hung out together. It's so cute. I know,
Speaker 1: it's just so I do envy you Internet negroes, you
Speaker 1: Internet al negroes. I really my altness was grounded in like,
Speaker 1: you know, giant hip hop crew meetings in Chicago, and
Speaker 1: I mean big ones, like hundreds of people, hundreds of
Speaker 1: hundreds for a meeting about hip hop.
Speaker 4: Well, okay, because we had cruise that you know, they
Speaker 4: were basically like legal gangs, like like the Graffiti Cruise
Speaker 4: in Chicago, the hip hop Cruise, and sometimes they group.
Speaker 4: There would be all city hip hop meetings and we
Speaker 4: would descend on the hair Washington Library, of course, and
Speaker 4: there would be hundreds of us.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So I guess my question is where did if your
Speaker 1: mom is playing uh easy E in the car, like,
Speaker 1: I feel like I can trace my alternative blackness to
Speaker 1: where it started from. I'm then only child, My mommus
Speaker 1: take me around, didn't spend didn't always want babysitter. So
Speaker 1: I was running adults a lot, and I got to
Speaker 1: because when we talk, I spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: by myself sort of creating my own version of what
Speaker 1: culture was same here in my room, and then I'd
Speaker 1: go outside and be like that we're not that's not
Speaker 1: we're not all doing Oh okay, I'll go I'll just
Speaker 1: go back in my room. Where does your so, Yeah,
Speaker 1: give me your the blueprint of how you got to
Speaker 1: be so South Side of Chicago late eighties, early nineties.
Speaker 4: It is not nice outside. It is not nice outside.
Speaker 4: And because my mom was living in life, she was
Speaker 4: living my grandparents raised me and my sister.
Speaker 1: Oh that will make you all if you're being raised
Speaker 1: by people who are a lot of your grandparents.
Speaker 4: And and a lot of that time was spent in
Speaker 4: front of the television. Yeah, so latch key kid in
Speaker 4: front of the TV. I wasn't allowed to go outside
Speaker 4: a lot, like literally because it was shooting outside.
Speaker 1: It's not like they're not mad, They're like, oh good,
Speaker 1: he's watching TV all day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we know it has something to do exactly. And
Speaker 4: we had cable, which was a rare ny We had cable,
Speaker 4: so so a lot a lot of my alt identity,
Speaker 4: a lot of a lot of the original information that
Speaker 4: isolated me socially was watching like hours and hours of MTV. Gosh,
Speaker 4: hours and hours of like the Comedy Channel.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah before Comedy Central, Comedy Central.
Speaker 4: Like I was just sort of kid that you know,
Speaker 4: once cartoons were because cartoons were such a uh some
Speaker 4: small segment of programming.
Speaker 2: And back then it was like they start at this
Speaker 2: time and they end at this time.
Speaker 1: And I was I had asthma real bad too. We
Speaker 1: both had. Okay, it's maybe asthma's the secret. Maybe asthma.
Speaker 1: So you're not you're not at the you're not at
Speaker 1: the at the court learning how to dunk. You're the
Speaker 1: kid who And back then, if you put out an
Speaker 1: asthma hailer, everybody would just like nobody knew what they were.
Speaker 1: I mean, so many kids I was around had asthma.
Speaker 1: Well black kids, yeah, exactly. It's one of our hidden
Speaker 1: talents as black people is being born in areas that
Speaker 1: give you asthma.
Speaker 4: It's terrible, but I you know, I had been hospitalized
Speaker 4: for asthma a few times as a kid. So I
Speaker 4: spent like a lot of time at home, you know,
Speaker 4: on school days, watching TV. And so that's when you
Speaker 4: would see the cartoons end at like nine am, and
Speaker 4: then from like nine am to three something when cartoons
Speaker 4: come back on, I'm looking for anything funny on television.
Speaker 4: So I'm like learning about the world through reruns of
Speaker 4: shows that happened in the seventies earlier in the eighties,
Speaker 4: and like all that stuff is like informing my worldview,
Speaker 4: you know. And I watched a lot of like I
Speaker 4: watched a lot of late eighties and early nineties stand
Speaker 4: up comedy because that was all over cable and you'd
Speaker 4: have like Evening at the Empire and a half hour
Speaker 4: Comedy Our all of that stuff. And so I'm learning
Speaker 4: how the world works through people telling jokes. The comedy
Speaker 4: specials used to come on like HBO and Showtime, like
Speaker 4: all of that stuff. Like you know what, I used
Speaker 4: to love watching Gallagher specials. I mean he loved watching
Speaker 4: a Gallagher special.
Speaker 1: People like this is definitely you have to be a
Speaker 1: certain as there was a time when v H one
Speaker 1: probably showed more Gallagher comedy than they showed music. And
Speaker 1: Gallagher had like I don't know, legitimately, like ten specials,
Speaker 1: a lot of specials. He had a lot of specials.
Speaker 1: And while we know them for ending with the Sledge
Speaker 1: of Maatic, he also was like sort of like a
Speaker 1: bargain basement George Carlin. He was like a word nerd. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was like this sort of like wordplay and like
Speaker 1: had some sort of like these idiots in Congress had
Speaker 1: a little bit of that.
Speaker 4: I always thought it was fascinating. It was just a
Speaker 4: person giving me this weird old perspective on life and language,
Speaker 4: and yeah.
Speaker 1: I ate all this stuff up. Yeah, okay, gallaghers, I
Speaker 1: think asthma, Asthma and Gallagher. I'll do it to you together,
Speaker 1: old old old people raising older people, raising you asthma
Speaker 1: and Gallagher that I need to we've we've diagnosed the patient.
Speaker 1: That's a special is a special gumbo. Because I definitely
Speaker 1: was like like I like, I very proudly say people
Speaker 1: told me I watched too much TV, but I actually
Speaker 1: turned it into a career, so I knew what I
Speaker 1: was doing. But yes, so that you're taking it all
Speaker 1: that stuff. So so I remember as a young black
Speaker 1: person being shunned by other black people because there's all
Speaker 1: another reason why you're some of us are over there
Speaker 1: is because you try to walk to eereverybody they know
Speaker 1: you're over there, you know what I mean. And I
Speaker 1: remember being sure just because people could black folks in
Speaker 1: Chicago I was in Chicago to at the same time
Speaker 1: could smell that like he's not It was I got
Speaker 1: the they out like us earlier, not for the same reason,
Speaker 1: for the same reasons, but just because it's like you're
Speaker 1: not just I can just smell it on you. You
Speaker 1: weren't like going to Atlanta and stealing people's rap styles.
Speaker 1: No that I'm not. I've never been called a colonizer.
Speaker 1: Good but uh and also all the other things. There's
Speaker 1: no pens over my house but uh so, but I
Speaker 1: know that, like I just knew that, like those there's
Speaker 1: a second there's a segment of black people who don't
Speaker 1: think I belong with them. They can smell it on me.
Speaker 1: Did you have that?
Speaker 2: I mean, you're also in the hip hop crew of hundreds.
Speaker 4: Okay, but we would be talking about my life before then, okay, right,
Speaker 4: because I discovered that community when I was like sixteen, okay, okay,
Speaker 4: and you know before that, I can say I felt
Speaker 4: like I didn't have much of a social identity at all.
Speaker 4: So I always felt like I was learning how to
Speaker 4: wear a socializing costume. That's why I say I could
Speaker 4: speak people, because.
Speaker 1: You know I could.
Speaker 4: I think I could appear to be comfortable like I
Speaker 4: could I could go to my cousin's house and lived
Speaker 4: in the projects and be chilling.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know.
Speaker 4: Now I used to get roasted because I was legitimately
Speaker 4: and visually a nerd, like it was undeniable, Like my
Speaker 4: grandmother worked at kmart, okay, and so my clothes were
Speaker 4: just whatever they were selling.
Speaker 1: Yeah discount. Yeah. So I was just in nice sweaters
Speaker 1: and corduroils all the time, all the business casual at eleven,
Speaker 1: with a little glasses and a little shag. I was
Speaker 1: not beating no nerd allegation. So I didn't. It wasn't
Speaker 1: so much you're not black, but it was certainly you're
Speaker 1: not cool, which that which also there's different ways to
Speaker 1: roast where you're kicking somebody out, but you're also seeing
Speaker 1: if you can roast them, see if they can take it.
Speaker 2: Then they're letting them in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I just saw you're so when does at
Speaker 1: what point is is hip hop becoming a career?
Speaker 4: So okay, I get in and I start freestyling. And
Speaker 4: I would say I didn't record a verse until I
Speaker 4: was eighteen for a song, and then I didn't write
Speaker 4: a song until I was in college. I had to
Speaker 4: be like twenty or twenty one, and but that entire
Speaker 4: time freestyle and battling, like street corner rapping, like really
Speaker 4: for real, for real, like battling, battling, battling.
Speaker 1: Like you're not the guy who's like all in his bedroom.
Speaker 4: No, I was there because there there wasn't a bedroom
Speaker 4: thing at that time, because nobody had recording equipment. So
Speaker 4: we didn't even none of us even thought of ever
Speaker 4: like trying to make it. You know, we were just
Speaker 4: doing the arts because that's what we were supposed to do.
Speaker 4: We were supposed to get out there and do the graffiti.
Speaker 4: We're supposed to learn to break dance, were supposed to rap,
Speaker 4: We're supposed to battle. So that's what we were doing,
Speaker 4: and we were getting sharp and getting good and whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, I was. I was.
Speaker 4: I achieved a lot of success in rap, like it
Speaker 4: was something that people could see I was good, and
Speaker 4: so I just did that, just freestyle for years and.
Speaker 1: Years and years and years.
Speaker 4: This band that I used to freestyle with in undergrad
Speaker 4: booked a show at the local spot where people performed,
Speaker 4: and they were like, we want to put you on
Speaker 4: a bill. I'm like cool, and they were like you
Speaker 4: need some songs.
Speaker 2: They're like, oh yeah, you're oh cool. No no, no,
Speaker 2: so I had to.
Speaker 4: I went home and I wrote and memorized five songs
Speaker 4: Jesus and that was my set, and I performed and
Speaker 4: it felt so cool. And then at the end of
Speaker 4: that show, they put two hundred dollars in my hand.
Speaker 4: And when I tell you, I've never had a better
Speaker 4: feeling in my whole life. And that was the beginning.
Speaker 4: It was, oh, like the thing I like to do,
Speaker 4: but for money.
Speaker 1: And also I just wrote these like, yeah, these songs
Speaker 1: didn't exist a we could go and now exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: So it was.
Speaker 4: It was all very encouraging toward Huh, maybe I could
Speaker 4: try this one day. So when I moved. I ended
Speaker 4: up moving to LA in two thousand and four, just
Speaker 4: a couple of years after I finished undergrad, and I
Speaker 4: was only supposed to be here a year because I
Speaker 4: was supposed to go to grad school, but I didn't
Speaker 4: end up doing that. But in the back of my
Speaker 4: head when I moved out here was the thought of
Speaker 4: maybe I could, Maybe I could try it, because I
Speaker 4: knew I knew the project Blowed guys. Now, I had
Speaker 4: visited a couple of times out here in LA visiting
Speaker 4: my dad, and I had gone to the Blow and
Speaker 4: I was a freestyle, so they took me. Actually, the
Speaker 4: first time I wrapped at the Blow, I got booed
Speaker 4: off stage.
Speaker 1: The first time that boot off stage. And when you
Speaker 1: look back on getting boot off stage, there's times you
Speaker 1: get boot off when it's your fault, in times where
Speaker 1: you go they sucked, which.
Speaker 4: Was I don't I think it's always your fault if
Speaker 4: you get booed off stage personally, Okay, okay, So I
Speaker 4: mean I certainly was not. When I first got on
Speaker 4: that stage. I had never rapped to a room full
Speaker 4: of rappers really, not like that, Like I had wrapped
Speaker 4: around rappers in like cipher settings. I had wrapped on stage,
Speaker 4: not like.
Speaker 1: We don't know me. I'm stepping on stage. I'm going
Speaker 1: to impress you with my with my lyrical ability, and
Speaker 1: everyone there just wants their time to be on stage.
Speaker 1: So if you're not being amazing, not using the topic,
Speaker 1: well yeah, they're getting you about it.
Speaker 2: So it was.
Speaker 4: It was a hard lesson, but you know, I came back.
Speaker 4: I had to sort of acclimate to what they were doing.
Speaker 4: It was a different approach, but I learned that approach too.
Speaker 1: It's funny that the same with comedy like if you
Speaker 1: do comedy in Chicago when you come to LA and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, this is a different vibe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in Chicago and LA specifically, when it came rap,
Speaker 4: it was two distinct different styles and I had to Yeah,
Speaker 4: I had to learn how to you know, I had
Speaker 4: to learn how to rap out here and put that
Speaker 4: into my tool bell.
Speaker 1: But at that point, how would you to layman like
Speaker 1: myself say, this is the difference in the styles.
Speaker 4: At the time, the Chicago was split into south Side
Speaker 4: and west Side.
Speaker 1: The south Side style was very it.
Speaker 4: Was very much a punchline style. It was like a
Speaker 4: lot of bars. I mean a lot of verses were constructed,
Speaker 4: set up punchline, set up punchline, a lot of big
Speaker 4: metaphors that that people would try to impress people with.
Speaker 4: In LA, it was about different cadences.
Speaker 1: It was about the percussive sound, being able to freestyle
Speaker 1: like that. And so when I came on that stage
Speaker 1: doing my setup punchline, it was like, get out, we
Speaker 1: do it up there. That is what it sounded like
Speaker 1: to them. That's what it sounded like to them. They
Speaker 1: weren't they weren't interested in watching me.
Speaker 4: Think, But because I knew some of those people, and
Speaker 4: some of those people had careers such that when I
Speaker 4: was in Chicago, I would hear some of their records.
Speaker 4: So ac alone Abstract ruled Micah nine a freestyle fellowship.
Speaker 4: These are guys who would be at Project Blow but
Speaker 4: have music that was going around the nation. So when
Speaker 4: I came out here, I was like, I'm gonna go
Speaker 4: over there and not leave, and I learned how to
Speaker 4: have a career over there.
Speaker 1: So you know, you're surrounded by rappers. Everybody's in it
Speaker 1: for different reasons, had different ideas what their career is
Speaker 1: going to be. You're and there's also been moments when
Speaker 1: it's like so called all black rappers have been sort
Speaker 1: of like have sort of entered the mainstream. Are you
Speaker 1: ever sort of like I say, this is a comedian.
Speaker 1: There were times in my career I thought I can
Speaker 1: be Eddie Murphy and there's then I realized I can't
Speaker 1: be it, you know what I mean, like like and
Speaker 1: looking back, I don't know what I was thinking about,
Speaker 1: but like and then so but I think, but then
Speaker 1: there's like I can see a path forward that's not that,
Speaker 1: but it is going to put me in a place
Speaker 1: where I can provide for my family and do what
Speaker 1: I want to do totally. Are you ever being like
Speaker 1: looking at a little Wayne and going like I'm next? No? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: See that's the thing because every rap most rappers would
Speaker 1: tell you if I don't think I'm you know, well
Speaker 1: that's the thing. I think great, But I think that
Speaker 1: what it's again, I think that what people at the
Speaker 1: very very top of the genre are doing are making
Speaker 1: something that's easily mass market digestible. And I'm not the
Speaker 1: best at that. In fact, I'll be terrible at that,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, But like.
Speaker 4: There's nobody better than me doing what I do, and
Speaker 4: that's what I always stand on.
Speaker 1: So the highest heights I had, you know, I had
Speaker 1: reached was having a television show, right and and you know,
Speaker 1: being able to do my thing next to method Man,
Speaker 1: next to lizz O, next.
Speaker 2: To M F.
Speaker 1: Doom like this. That that was like my dreams realized.
Speaker 1: That was the New Negroes. Negroes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 4: That was you know, as far as the level of
Speaker 4: cultural penetration that I was ever hoping for.
Speaker 1: That was it. So we talked about that, you had
Speaker 1: the show of the New Negroes, which I remember Baron
Speaker 1: Vaughn's a part of that. And there was just this
Speaker 1: I remember hearing about it for a long time, like
Speaker 1: it just seemed like it was like the Comedy Central
Speaker 1: was trying to figure like had it and didn't been
Speaker 1: put it out for a while, and yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a weird situ It was easy.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing I knew of somebody from the outside.
Speaker 1: Also Kevin's my friend that like, oh, that's to know
Speaker 1: that you have a show and to know that it's
Speaker 1: not like it's not doing the thing you thought I
Speaker 1: was gonna do, or to know that it's taken a
Speaker 1: while and to know that, like and then to know
Speaker 1: that it's out and you go, I thought the dream
Speaker 1: was having a show, and now I have a show,
Speaker 1: and I sort of maybe I know. I'll speak for myself,
Speaker 1: I kind of can't wait for this to be over.
Speaker 4: I can't say that I was of the mind that
Speaker 4: I couldn't wait for it to be over. But after
Speaker 4: the first season ended, and you know, when we were
Speaker 4: having conversations about potentially doing a second, my thought was,
Speaker 4: I do want it to happen, but I have to
Speaker 4: find a way to do it where this network is
Speaker 4: not shitting in my heart. I have to find a
Speaker 4: way to do it where they are not chewing on
Speaker 4: my soul for this because what I can tell after
Speaker 4: having this one season's worth of experience is that these
Speaker 4: people don't much care what happens to my mind, and
Speaker 4: so I can't keep feeding them the best part of me.
Speaker 4: That's yeah, So that that was my thought, Like I
Speaker 4: definitely wanted to do it again. Yeah, but I had
Speaker 4: to find a different way to do it.
Speaker 1: And season two didn't happen. Season two didn't happen, you know,
Speaker 1: and even that was it. It was like we really
Speaker 1: like sing in your Heart, Yeah, but that was the
Speaker 1: final turn. That's not you really need to do that part.
Speaker 1: We'd love to do a season two, but we got
Speaker 1: to ship in your Heart. No, man, I interest you
Speaker 1: in shitting in your heart?
Speaker 2: No, So where does that take you after that? Is that?
Speaker 1: Like, Well, I'm just going my own way.
Speaker 4: I mean I have I've had a I've had a
Speaker 4: few TV projects in the works, I had things in development,
Speaker 4: I had things get shelved, i have shows I've written for.
Speaker 4: I haven't had another look like that. But it's like
Speaker 4: I feel like where we are now. That was a
Speaker 4: stand up comedy, hip hop variety show, which on paper
Speaker 4: miraculous that it ever.
Speaker 2: Existed, to the air miraculous.
Speaker 4: So I mean, it's not the sort of thing where
Speaker 4: I behold in my breath looking to do that, that
Speaker 4: type of thing again, trying to reboot it, right, I think,
Speaker 4: I mean, we did try to, but we gave up
Speaker 4: on that dream. But the things that I try to
Speaker 4: do in TV now more just like scripted, like more
Speaker 4: trying to translate my ideas into, you know, what what
Speaker 4: the market is looking for, rather than trying to shoehorn
Speaker 4: what I do into platforms that are that maybe it's
Speaker 4: not studied for well.
Speaker 1: And that and and that brings me to how I
Speaker 1: discovered you in the last I don't know how long
Speaker 1: you've been doing it, but when I discovered you in
Speaker 1: the last several months of you now on YouTube just
Speaker 1: sort of like speaking to the culture directly and putting
Speaker 1: you're putting your opinions out there and sort of you know,
Speaker 1: certainly you've always been the first with opinions, and you've
Speaker 1: always you're on Twitter, you've certainly weren't shy about sharing
Speaker 1: your opinions. But what makes you decide to go and
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've caught up late, Like I
Speaker 1: don't know how long it has been going on, but
Speaker 1: like it talks about what this project is.
Speaker 4: It hasn't been that long. So I started streaming on
Speaker 4: twitch I think like three years ago. Okay, uh, And
Speaker 4: that's a that's a fun thing that can pay a
Speaker 4: decent amount of money if you got the right level
Speaker 4: of engagement. And you know, my show on there has
Speaker 4: gotten to a decent place. But it occurred to me
Speaker 4: that the state of YouTube was such that I was
Speaker 4: seeing a lot of people who were repurposing clips from
Speaker 4: their live streams into YouTube content, and I dabbled in that.
Speaker 4: Especially around the time of the Kendrick and Drake battle.
Speaker 4: Was this huge sort of open door where everybody had
Speaker 4: a voracious appetite for discourse around that beef and them songs.
Speaker 1: That was me, I was everybody. Yeah, I wanted to
Speaker 1: hear everybody's opinion on it. I wanted to know everybody
Speaker 1: that was me.
Speaker 4: And that's sort of how I got into it, right.
Speaker 4: I had made a couple of clips and put a
Speaker 4: couple of things up and was short of trying to
Speaker 4: figure out my way through it. But I saw in
Speaker 4: that that it was exactly that attitude that everybody wanted
Speaker 4: to hear what everybody had to say.
Speaker 1: I don't care if I grew, I don't care if
Speaker 1: I like what you voted for. I don't care if
Speaker 1: you were by bullying high school. If you have an
Speaker 1: opinion on Drake versus Kendrick, I would I would like
Speaker 1: to hear it. So between that and Diddy getting arrested,
Speaker 1: and because my biggest clip was me or one of
Speaker 1: my biggest early clips was speaking to that because I
Speaker 1: remember being especially sort of upset about the Diddy revelations
Speaker 1: because that hip hop community that I'm telling you I've
Speaker 1: been a part of thirty years, I feel like we
Speaker 1: have been trying to warn people about Diddy for the
Speaker 1: entire time. Oh you know, like I feel like you
Speaker 1: have about your specific hip hop community, like the greater
Speaker 1: hip hop well, I mean, I mean the greater hip
Speaker 1: hop community in terms of the bee boy side of it,
Speaker 1: you know, the underground hip hop side of it. Like
Speaker 1: so where sometimes our messaging comes across as mainstream bad,
Speaker 1: underground good, I think that there's an underlying thing where
Speaker 1: we're like, hey, that guy, and where he's trying to
Speaker 1: take things. It's got this weird thing too, Like it's
Speaker 1: it seems sort of antithetical to this thing that we're
Speaker 1: trying to preserve. And if you follow his career, like
Speaker 1: it opened the door to all of this weirdness, right,
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's something that we were ahead on.
Speaker 1: And and and I had a lot to say about
Speaker 1: trying to understand why it is that people don't listen
Speaker 1: to that sort of warning. And that was that was
Speaker 1: an early successful clip. And that was one of the
Speaker 1: ones I was just like, I was just talking. I
Speaker 1: didn't edit.
Speaker 4: I talked for like half an hour, and people liked it.
Speaker 4: And I was like, oh, okay, so this is and.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like when you did the five songs
Speaker 1: at the club and you got two hundred dollars, You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: is that I just talked for half hour?
Speaker 2: By the thing I care a lot about?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And and and that's the that's the balancing acto.
Speaker 1: Was that last part you said, because and this is
Speaker 1: what I ran into early on, was that, Oh, the
Speaker 1: way that this works as a thing to make money
Speaker 1: on is that you have to talk about the things
Speaker 1: people care about.
Speaker 2: But do.
Speaker 1: I always care about what people care about. That's That's
Speaker 1: the thing I see happen to people that I follow
Speaker 1: on YouTube is you can tell when they're like paying
Speaker 1: more too much attention to the algorithm, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: do you really want to talk about or actually, maybe
Speaker 1: you'd like talking about it, but I don't think you
Speaker 1: having like a real Yeah, I think you need to
Speaker 1: say about it. You're talking about it. But I think
Speaker 1: there's that's the thing. I think there's an invitation just
Speaker 1: sort of like, oh, this is trending in the news.
Speaker 1: I should probably got I got a way in. And
Speaker 1: I see people sometimes like y'all have been begging me
Speaker 1: to make a video, Like recently everybody who I follow
Speaker 1: is like, I know, y'all want me to talk about
Speaker 1: Jack Harlow, Jack Hart, Yes, And it just feels like
Speaker 1: that becomes like and believe me, when did Jack Harlow
Speaker 1: think broke? And as we take this, it's not that
Speaker 1: long ago. I was like, let me go to what
Speaker 1: Mike's talking about. Like I definitely was like, I want
Speaker 1: to see he's got something to say. Oh good, he does,
Speaker 1: and it's a long video.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that was like Christmas. I mean but but
Speaker 4: that is, you know, that is the difference, right, Like
Speaker 4: that is something that I genuinely had thoughts about, right
Speaker 4: where there was other stuff I found myself talking about
Speaker 4: when this journey first started, where I was like, eh,
Speaker 4: I'd kind of rather I didn't make a video on
Speaker 4: that because I I don't actually care about it, you know,
Speaker 4: but it's it's it's just it's it's that just learning
Speaker 4: to you kind of listen to myself and and know
Speaker 4: this some some discussions I'll I'd rather stay out.
Speaker 1: Of, which is which is I have that same thing.
Speaker 1: It's like I don't actually need to weigh in on this.
Speaker 1: I can share somebody else's opinion, right. But so there's
Speaker 1: two things I want to talk about. One is just
Speaker 1: the how you came to be this sort of like
Speaker 1: version of yourself that you are and exists inside the
Speaker 1: greater Black umbrella that we that we live under, and
Speaker 1: you know, indie indie rap, indie black, you know over there,
Speaker 1: all the different ways to do over there over there.
Speaker 1: The other thing I'm talking about is, and this is
Speaker 1: something I deal with, is like how to maintain the
Speaker 1: independence without one sort of going like maybe you know
Speaker 1: there's ways you go maybe I will lean into the mainstream.
Speaker 1: Or there's sometimes it's like maybe I'll go get a
Speaker 1: job at the post office to quote Hollywood shuffle, like
Speaker 1: maybe I'll go, maybe I'll do some things I didn't
Speaker 1: think I was gonna do. Like with me, it's like
Speaker 1: I go three kids, nine jobs. I have to sort
Speaker 1: of like have a lot of things up in the air.
Speaker 1: Same because I still got to feed these people. Yep,
Speaker 1: and I mean literally these people. Yeah, not like feed
Speaker 1: the people my truth bombs. I mean, so how do
Speaker 1: you and I even the way? You and I don't
Speaker 1: need any money, God's gonna clear. But like I hear
Speaker 1: you like, oh this twitch thing okay, yeah, YouTube you're monetizing.
Speaker 2: Oh the video does well. And then also I'm going
Speaker 2: on tour.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also I'm trying to do writing projects.
Speaker 2: How do you?
Speaker 1: How do you do all that? I mean, it's it
Speaker 1: is exactly what you said. I do it all because
Speaker 1: I have to.
Speaker 4: I got into a space at the end of twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four where.
Speaker 1: The outlook was bad.
Speaker 4: I had a I had a show that got bought
Speaker 4: and developed by Peacock.
Speaker 1: Okay, and you know.
Speaker 4: They sort of they sort of let us around by
Speaker 4: the nose for six seven months and then ultimately shelved
Speaker 4: the project. And that was that was like my last
Speaker 4: the last thing that my chips were on. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: the last big project that my chips were on. And
Speaker 4: I sort of looked around and was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: this is this is not this doesn't look good.
Speaker 1: It looks bad when that when that's when the when
Speaker 1: those chips go off the table, like wait a minute, Mike,
Speaker 1: I'm missing some chip. Yeah, and your family looking over like, man,
Speaker 1: we're hungry. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I got to have a big son, he's very big.
Speaker 4: And I looked around and I was.
Speaker 1: Like, I need to get a job. Probably I need
Speaker 1: to probably not be waiting for some email. It's going
Speaker 1: to change my life at this point. Oh man, this
Speaker 1: is so like exactly. Yeah. So I spent I would say,
Speaker 1: like the last quarter of twenty twenty four applying the
Speaker 1: jobs in the music industry and you know, and production
Speaker 1: houses in nonprofits because a lot of my work before
Speaker 1: being in entertainment was working in nonprofits. And when I
Speaker 1: tell you, I didn't even get an email back. I
Speaker 1: didn't even get any e mail back. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: not even like oh, it'd be fun to we're not
Speaker 1: gonna hire him, let's meet him.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, like I came away from that time having learned, oh,
Speaker 4: I'm unhirable, Like I can't really get a job because
Speaker 4: like there's no way to organize my resume that makes
Speaker 4: it look like I sincerely want to work at a place.
Speaker 1: That I'm This resume doesn't say nine to five minute breaks.
Speaker 1: It says it is much right. Yeah, it says it
Speaker 1: says needs a paycheck, and we'll leave here as soon
Speaker 1: as soon anything slightly better comes along with even a
Speaker 1: promise of something slightly better, I'm not showing up.
Speaker 4: So uh, with that knowledge, I sort of looked around
Speaker 4: at the landscape and I said, Okay, the only way
Speaker 4: through this is to work harder. You know, that was
Speaker 4: the only way through. So, you know, if it's streaming,
Speaker 4: if it's youtubing, uh, if it's TV writing, if it's
Speaker 4: doing shows, if it's putting you know, putting out albums.
Speaker 1: Merg sales, which I helped you with exactly exactly. Yeah, Uh,
Speaker 1: y'all don't know.
Speaker 4: Now, he's a he's a great, excellent uh merch second
Speaker 4: in command.
Speaker 1: There's proof. There's a picture of me holding up a
Speaker 1: T shirt like this that's proves no, we're yeah. I
Speaker 1: was happy to help. It was great. No, No, So
Speaker 1: I mean I I resonate so much with this because
Speaker 1: he sort of like and you know you sort of
Speaker 1: like every now and again, I get paralyzed sometime just
Speaker 1: like by like if I don't if it doesn't come
Speaker 1: out of my head and generate income, then the whole
Speaker 1: thing falls apart, like it's the whole house of cards.
Speaker 4: It is a lot of pressure, and I think what
Speaker 4: a lot of people underestimate is like how much time
Speaker 4: that takes, not even doing other things, but thinking of
Speaker 4: the things that the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's sort of like the gurgling of the thing
Speaker 1: to get it out of your mouth or your fingers.
Speaker 4: So you gotta you gotta imagine it, you gotta you know,
Speaker 4: try to get it in a place to be produced,
Speaker 4: and you gotta do these things like it's it's it
Speaker 4: is a lot, and I think I think a lot
Speaker 4: of times people underestimate how much free time that leaves
Speaker 4: a person with because it's not much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I was just how hard it is on
Speaker 1: your family right when it's like sometimes I know I'll
Speaker 1: speak for myself, I'm just like almost like like this
Speaker 1: in a corner.
Speaker 2: Gotta you wanna Yeah, you know what I mean? Huh?
Speaker 1: Or you know when my kids say, put your phone down, data,
Speaker 1: I need to get this on Instagram. Yeah. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: don't understand. It's not you know, it's not it's not
Speaker 1: happy fun time all I've Actually my kids are now
Speaker 1: like fourteen, Like my oldest one. I talked to her
Speaker 1: recently and we had she great, kid, doesn't hate me.
Speaker 1: Really hated the trope of teenagers hating their parents. So
Speaker 1: she's rebelling against that.
Speaker 2: That's nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, she's rebelling against because everything you watch as
Speaker 1: a kid is about teenagers hating their parents. And she
Speaker 1: was like resolved at like ten, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: do that. Love, that's fantastic. We've had we've definitely, She's
Speaker 1: like we've had like beefs and screens, but none about
Speaker 1: like I just hate you over all. And the one
Speaker 1: time I was like, look she was she was upsetting
Speaker 1: me with something. I was like, you're on a hundred
Speaker 1: percent right, dah. Also, I think you're old enough to
Speaker 1: know it takes work to keep this afloat. That's ru
Speaker 1: It's not like you're old enough to know. I'm not
Speaker 1: asking you to participate, I'm not asking you to stress
Speaker 1: about it, but just understand that, like you are old
Speaker 1: enough to know that this is a lot of work,
Speaker 1: know and and I am happy to do it for you,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna and sometimes that means I'm not going
Speaker 1: to be my best self. It does call something like
Speaker 1: and I don't it doesn't justify it, right, but just
Speaker 1: you're old enough to know that, Like you know, this
Speaker 1: is a lot and it's draining, and.
Speaker 4: It's just I think it just comes down to maths,
Speaker 4: Like it's just like the time and the energy that
Speaker 4: it takes. It's like, yeah, you're not always going to
Speaker 4: have your best I think that's that's a real fair
Speaker 4: way to do it. My son's seventeen, so you know,
Speaker 4: his his desire to connect. It's very regimented, you know
Speaker 4: what I'm saying. So I can manage my resources enough
Speaker 4: to kind of Yeah, he's not, Yeah, he's you know,
Speaker 4: he's not a little kid that needs a lot.
Speaker 1: Come and climb climb into your lab at the end
Speaker 1: of every day. Yeah he's not. I don't think.
Speaker 4: Well, he doesn't ask me to put my phone down,
Speaker 4: but sometimes I can tell that he wants me to
Speaker 4: be watching what he's watching on TV.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you know what, you're right, you're a
Speaker 1: era you're at. So I guess my last guys, we
Speaker 1: bring this into the clothes. A couple of the questions one,
Speaker 1: what is your what? How is your son's uh, how's
Speaker 1: your son's blackness? Like, how's your son's It seems very
Speaker 1: uh stable, he he it's a different era now, it
Speaker 1: is a different era. Yeah, black people allowed to have
Speaker 1: like tattoos, and I mean black men. You know, the
Speaker 1: expression uh, you know, the expression spectrum is all over
Speaker 1: the place. He goes to a mostly white school, though,
Speaker 1: like there are you know, it's it's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a neighborhood school, so there's a good amount of
Speaker 1: black kids, but they are the minority. So I don't
Speaker 1: think there's anyone around there challenging his blackness, but it
Speaker 1: is his identity seems very very grounded, very grounded.
Speaker 2: Good job, good job parents.
Speaker 4: Well you know it's it's I feel like I just
Speaker 4: have to uh uh fight the manisphere off of them
Speaker 4: all the time. I just gotta constantly, I gotta throw
Speaker 4: hands with the manispheres. It's just all the time, just
Speaker 4: all the time fighting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I said this last night, like I feel
Speaker 1: really lucky that I had three daughters because I can
Speaker 1: just sort of like give away all the men's state secrets.
Speaker 2: I can just be like I'm a double agent, like
Speaker 2: here's what men do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Whereas you have to be like, as I said
Speaker 1: in my daughter one point, the problem with being a
Speaker 1: boy is that you can be a really good person,
Speaker 1: but at some point you're gonna be in a room
Speaker 1: with a bunch of bad boys and you're gonna feel pressure.
Speaker 1: Even if you're totally like sweetheart teddy Bear, you're gonna
Speaker 1: feel pressure to sort of like be one of them,
Speaker 1: or you're gonna go to them for counsel and they're
Speaker 1: gonna tell you the wrong thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and and and with the way social media is,
Speaker 4: of course, yeah.
Speaker 1: They don't. They don't have to be asking, they're just
Speaker 1: not Andrew Hates just showing up all the time, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just with some with some unsolicited Like my son.
Speaker 4: Has been exposed to Andrew Tate for like seven years,
Speaker 4: you know, like and and I'm like, he's not even
Speaker 4: the one I'm really worried about, Like I'm I'm more
Speaker 4: worried about the ones where it's like I can tell
Speaker 4: that it's like that, but it's not as immediately as parent.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's not as obvious, you know that like that.
Speaker 4: That those are the the values informing the takes. And
Speaker 4: I got to be like, hey, hey, but yeah, that
Speaker 4: guy he hates women.
Speaker 2: I have to say that a lot. Yeah, he's on
Speaker 2: the internet. Yeah, good for you for saying that.
Speaker 1: You gotta say it. He hates women, hate swimming, hate women. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like everything that he just said he translated, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't like women. And then and then there's this weird
Speaker 1: thing about like I understand, I mean I feel like this,
Speaker 1: like I understand that you're watching it for this, like
Speaker 1: maybe he's talking about hip hop, but also he hates swimming. Right,
Speaker 1: so just if you need to separate out the hip
Speaker 1: or the football top or the NBA talk, but understanding,
Speaker 1: leave the hate, don't take.
Speaker 2: All of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know, he plays me a lot of
Speaker 4: artists that he likes, because you know, the hip hop
Speaker 4: he's into its very hit different than the hip hop.
Speaker 1: That's wonder I'm into.
Speaker 2: And he liked the hip hop he's into.
Speaker 1: I like some of it, and I can appreciate a
Speaker 1: lot of it even if I don't like it. What
Speaker 1: kind of hip hop does he like?
Speaker 4: I mean, it's it's funny because it is called underground
Speaker 4: hip hop, but it's got nothing to do. It's not
Speaker 4: your underground.
Speaker 1: It's not nothing. It's not underground. As a kid, it's
Speaker 1: not my underground.
Speaker 2: Now, son, I'm in the underground. I would know if it's.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: I don't see that guy any of the underground hip
Speaker 2: hop meetings.
Speaker 4: No, this is a whole new crop that does a
Speaker 4: whole different sound. It is way it's kind of way out,
Speaker 4: but that's what I appreciate about it is that it's
Speaker 4: way out, but it's like way out through a hood lens.
Speaker 4: It's it's really different kind of stuff. But you know,
Speaker 4: he asked me my opinion of these artists a lot,
Speaker 4: and I always have to tell him, Like this guy, right,
Speaker 4: I like, I like what he does. I think his
Speaker 4: flow is interesting. I think his approach is cool. I
Speaker 4: think he's a good songwriter. Yeah, but he hates women.
Speaker 1: But he hates women like I don't know if you
Speaker 1: can hear this, he actually hates with me, you know,
Speaker 1: And and so.
Speaker 4: You know, we we We have tough conversations like that
Speaker 4: a lot. But yeah, I gotta you know, I gotta,
Speaker 4: I gotta fight the manisphere.
Speaker 1: That's the only way I can do it. My other
Speaker 1: liberated to the manisphere because I've been affected, my cris
Speaker 1: been affected by this.
Speaker 2: Definitely.
Speaker 1: Have you been affected by the trumpification of the like
Speaker 1: just the industry and the trumplification of like And I
Speaker 1: don't mean as a human like the DEI like, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, sort of like the sort of
Speaker 1: the like we're not interested in blackness in the way
Speaker 1: that we used to pretend to be. And so there's
Speaker 1: a time when New Negroes is being green white. New
Speaker 1: Negroes is not getting greenlit now. But you know, so
Speaker 1: like are you have you been does that affect you
Speaker 1: in the music industry? And not really Okay, there's you.
Speaker 4: Know, anybody who's talking about buying me as a performer,
Speaker 4: as a you know, as a as a musician anything
Speaker 4: like they know what I bring and it's it's it
Speaker 4: would be very different if I was trying to sell
Speaker 4: a TV show now, it would be very different. But
Speaker 4: that's a that's a corporate buyer, and I don't usually
Speaker 4: deal with I don't have to deal with you actively.
Speaker 2: Are not dealing with the corporate buyers.
Speaker 1: See, I still am like every now and again, like
Speaker 1: because I also because I direct documentaries, I get I
Speaker 1: get sort of put before the corporate buyers and in
Speaker 1: those ways have to be like, hey, which I you know,
Speaker 1: to me, that's like almost the equivalent of getting a
Speaker 1: day job, like of like I will direct this thing
Speaker 1: and I'll put my I'll try to put my spin
Speaker 1: on it, but this but it's you know, and I'll
Speaker 1: try to enjoy the work, but it's.
Speaker 4: Not necessarily your top ten most interested in personally topics.
Speaker 1: Not things that I would do left to my own device.
Speaker 1: Like this podcast is me being like I want something
Speaker 1: that's for me. I want something that's like I couldn't
Speaker 1: I could probably call you and be like, let's talk
Speaker 1: for an hour, but that'd be weird, you know, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't hate it. Yeah no, yeah, but I mean maybe
Speaker 1: we can do it now. But I really this podcast
Speaker 1: is about me saying like I want to have conversations people.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about it and talk to people
Speaker 1: about things I wanted to talk to them about in
Speaker 1: a way that is like I'm just going to talk
Speaker 1: to you about this thing. You know, so in a
Speaker 1: way that like being able to phone get back to
Speaker 1: your indie struggle might be weird. I'm very curious what
Speaker 1: you and Ted dance and talked about.
Speaker 2: Talk about afterwards.
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope it's not the same. It's the
Speaker 1: exact same conversation. That would be really weird.
Speaker 2: Now it's not. It's but they're all related to blackness.
Speaker 2: So a couple of fun questions.
Speaker 1: Then we'll get to the it's all fun, but anyway,
Speaker 1: just want I just want to know I've had moments
Speaker 1: like this, and I want to know what is it
Speaker 1: like when when somebody like James Gun is like this, like,
Speaker 1: did you have any connection to James Gun? So James
Speaker 1: Gun director of like I guess he's in charge of
Speaker 1: DC Movies now and was also director of many Marvel movies.
Speaker 1: Just it was like, this is what I'm listening to
Speaker 1: as I write Superman, Yeah, and you were on the
Speaker 1: this is what I listened to the.
Speaker 4: Playlist put out his I don't know why James Gun
Speaker 4: is sitting around listening to indie rap.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. I had heard whispers of that
Speaker 1: and I guess.
Speaker 4: His brother, Sean Gunn Yeah, is a real big Indie fan,
Speaker 4: Anie Rap fans who. So you know, I'm not sure
Speaker 4: how the flow is going to who thisss a hold
Speaker 4: or what first or whatever, but I had no idea
Speaker 4: something like that was coming down the pint, and it
Speaker 4: was amazing. I feel like there was a time in
Speaker 4: my career when that used to happen more. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: I think my work was newer on the scene, so
Speaker 4: more people we were discovering it, I guess at the time,
Speaker 4: and so I hadn't had nothing like that happened in
Speaker 4: a minute, So I thought that was real cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're like, oh, like people people, my
Speaker 1: work's out there, right, Okay, I can be liked by
Speaker 1: people who were in the mainstream. Uh do you remember
Speaker 1: doing my podcast? You remember this? Do you? Was this
Speaker 1: during to you by us? I believe so, yes, I don't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, wow, yeah we listened to We went to a
Speaker 4: restaurant I believe in Berkeley, and I was after totally biased.
Speaker 4: We didn't even have I didn't even have microphones. I
Speaker 4: just had like a tape recorder on the table, I
Speaker 4: don't remember, and you heard everybody conversation in a room,
Speaker 4: including nods wow is.
Speaker 1: That still up somewhere?
Speaker 2: Probably?
Speaker 1: Wow, It's funny if you ask, I'm like it was
Speaker 1: so maybe it was after I moved back to Berkeley.
Speaker 1: There was like about a three or four year period
Speaker 1: where I was like, like it was the totally bias.
Speaker 1: It was like I felt like that period was like
Speaker 1: that period of my life was like the end of
Speaker 1: a Vietnam War movie where the survivors are just like
Speaker 1: and it took me a while to climb out and
Speaker 1: sort of like resettle into myself for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: Because also it was like I thought I was gonna
Speaker 1: have this show where I thought I was gonna have
Speaker 1: the show for twenty years, and then I had it
Speaker 1: for a year and then something I had to go
Speaker 1: like again, I think you said, like, oh my twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four is not doing what I thought I was
Speaker 1: gonna do. And my wife's pregnant with our second kid,
Speaker 1: so that's like a real like this is the It's
Speaker 1: funny you say that, because right now is the closest
Speaker 1: I've ever felt to that, just because it's like it's
Speaker 1: I feel like it's all on me, nobody's out there like,
Speaker 1: like you said, nobody's no emails coming in and going.
Speaker 1: We found like two million dollars. It has your name
Speaker 1: on it, so just just want to get it to you.
Speaker 1: Just send us the VENMO. That's not gonna happen. So
Speaker 1: my kingdom for two million exactly. So Wow, that's things.
Speaker 2: That's a that took me. That took me back to
Speaker 2: a thing I don't remember, but I have like fleeting
Speaker 2: memories of but it's not.
Speaker 1: Well you you were, you were, You were doing me
Speaker 1: a great kindness and that's why I bring it up. Okay,
Speaker 1: well great kindness. Well I was happy to do it
Speaker 1: then I'm happy to do it now. I feel honored
Speaker 1: that you sat down with me. Uh. Two things before
Speaker 1: we leave. One, give me the mic the open Mic
Speaker 1: Eagle starter kit. The five songs that you would tell
Speaker 1: somebody if they're like, let's hey, what's this? Like, I
Speaker 1: think I'm ready to get it into open Mike Eagle.
Speaker 1: What are the five five of my song your songs? Yeah,
Speaker 1: dishes off of my second album, Rappers Die Natural Causes, uh,
Speaker 1: Ziggy Starfish because that's the song people like the most.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's good, it's good.
Speaker 1: Now you want to put the hit in there. You
Speaker 1: want to put give them the hit. Yeah, happy Wasteland day.
Speaker 1: To give people a sense of my uh social commentary. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'd say, okay, but I'm the phone screen to give
Speaker 1: people a sense of how fascinated I am with the mundane. Okay,
Speaker 1: one more, one more would be I think I would go,
Speaker 1: oh man, that's tough. One more.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna a dark comedy late show because I'm I'm
Speaker 4: I'm doing self deprecation, I'm doing social commentary, but I'm
Speaker 4: also just killing you a bar.
Speaker 1: Killing you today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, good we need It's funny.
Speaker 1: Even for those titles I think you you you, sort
Speaker 1: of you go to sort of you exude all black,
Speaker 1: Indie black. None of those were like uh Maserati on
Speaker 1: my YACHTI like, none of those were like yeah, none
Speaker 1: of those were like bullet holes for my soul, you know, no, no,
Speaker 1: no bottle service, no bottles. And then is there a
Speaker 1: lesson from your life or something that you think about
Speaker 1: that you're like, this is like a thing to get
Speaker 1: you through or a thing that you feel like it's true,
Speaker 1: like sort of a thing that you like think about
Speaker 1: like or sort of things of things that are like
Speaker 1: that you sort of like this is a this helps
Speaker 1: to find who I am.
Speaker 2: To me, I just you know, I I.
Speaker 1: What's the word I do?
Speaker 4: I have this deep, deep sense of gratitude for everything
Speaker 4: that I've been able to do, and a lot of
Speaker 4: it really goes back to like, I've.
Speaker 1: Done things that I dreamed of doing when I was
Speaker 1: fifteen or sixteen years old, dreamed of And you know,
Speaker 1: the big lesson for me is that you know, whether
Speaker 1: it's twenty twenty four and I got no money left
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to get a job or I'm I'm
Speaker 1: hustling the way I'm hustling right now, or if it's
Speaker 1: twenty there was a time in twenty eighteen when the
Speaker 1: New Negroes was on TV and being actively marketed. In
Speaker 1: the house I was living at the time, when I
Speaker 1: opened my bedroom window, there was a billboard with my
Speaker 1: face on it right on the next block that I
Speaker 1: could see through my bedroom window, and I just I never,
Speaker 1: like the worst of times, I never lose sight of
Speaker 1: of the the improbable things. M h. I've been able
Speaker 1: I've been able to do, and I just I just
Speaker 1: hold on to that gratitude a lot that gratitude is
Speaker 1: a big thing for me with my kids, like we
Speaker 1: talk about because I feel like the life they're living,
Speaker 1: they're sort of things that are happening because they sort
Speaker 1: of were born after my career started happening that they're
Speaker 1: sort of like, oh yeah, we just sort of like
Speaker 1: and so very early on I was like, I'm happy
Speaker 1: that they have this great life, that they're getting to
Speaker 1: do these things and meet people and like, but also
Speaker 1: I want you to be grateful. So at the end
Speaker 1: of the night, I would say when they were young,
Speaker 1: I still do with my youngest, tell me three things
Speaker 1: you're grateful for from today.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is the way to sort of reminds me like,
Speaker 2: this is not all supposed to happen.
Speaker 1: For really, and it seemsy to take it for granted,
Speaker 1: like you said, when they're born into it. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: when I was jally biased, my oldest daughter was one
Speaker 1: and she's like, I have a picture somewhere of her
Speaker 1: and her little friend blowing bubbles with don Cheedle. I
Speaker 1: don't know that being on my show, but I have
Speaker 1: this picture of her blowing Yeah, no photo, and it's
Speaker 1: like one day you're looking at me like what Wow,
Speaker 1: you know, and so gratitude. That is a great lesson.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy that we were able to sit down
Speaker 1: and talk. And I really do feel like we were
Speaker 1: sort of of a kind and not like that. I
Speaker 1: think that like I would not be the rapper you
Speaker 1: were if I was a rapper. But that's how I
Speaker 1: explained it to my wife. You know, me, you and
Speaker 1: quest Love. Oh yeah, all the same guy. It's a different,
Speaker 1: different shuffle. The last thing I asked you from homework,
Speaker 1: what is a cause that you want people to know
Speaker 1: more about her, pay attention to or support. I would
Speaker 1: love people if they're able to to support the Inglewood
Speaker 1: Mutual Aid Fund. There you go. I've tasked myself with
Speaker 1: with getting more involved in the in the mutual aid.
Speaker 1: It's a local to me, especially.
Speaker 4: Coming out of the pandemic, coming out of the fires,
Speaker 4: coming you know, just with with all into Trump, Yeah,
Speaker 4: coming into Trump especially.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 1: I do a podcast called past Do Uh. That podcast
Speaker 1: is where earlier we were, you know, we were lightweight,
Speaker 1: getting into numbers. We really talked members because.
Speaker 4: Like the whole podcast is about how tough it is
Speaker 4: to navigate this current economy as creatives and you know,
Speaker 4: one thing that just comes up over and over again
Speaker 4: in these conversations is how important it is that we're active.
Speaker 1: In the communities that we live around. And you know,
Speaker 1: the community I live in is Anglewood, and you know
Speaker 1: that's that's the mutual ay that I would love people
Speaker 1: to support again. And so I just talked to my
Speaker 1: previous podcast guests. We talked about mutual aid and I
Speaker 1: was introducing it to him as like mutually He was like,
Speaker 1: what is that? And so to hear you then shout
Speaker 1: that out, I'm going to send that link to him,
Speaker 1: just sort of like because I think mutual aid is
Speaker 1: if America is going to survive. Mutual aid is how
Speaker 1: we're gonna is one of the ways we're gonna be
Speaker 1: able to survive. The only way we can is to
Speaker 1: is to help each other out and just put the
Speaker 1: resources and money or goods directly in the hands of
Speaker 1: people who need them without navigating through traditional foundational institutional
Speaker 1: grifters grifterscripts like let me, let me get a taste,
Speaker 1: let me for you before you give the before you
Speaker 1: give her that blanket. I'm gonna need to have a
Speaker 1: blanket corner.
Speaker 2: The blanket all right man the last So you're with me? Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, I knew you were. Thanks brother.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I ended that way because felt
Speaker 1: like we need enough way to end it. We can
Speaker 1: leave this in with me awkwardly feeling bad about the
Speaker 1: fist bump. Thank you for listening to my interview with
Speaker 1: open Mic Eagle conversation why to say interview. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening again. O Mike eagles new album, Doom comes
Speaker 1: out August thirteenth. His last album is out now from
Speaker 1: last year, Neighborhood Gods Unlimited. He can't be stopped. His
Speaker 1: podcast is past due. You can watch them stream on Twitch.
Speaker 1: You can also see he puts clips up on YouTube
Speaker 1: and he's just a good dude. So check out open
Speaker 1: Mike Eagle and open Mic Eagle shouted out Inglewood Mutual Aid.
Speaker 1: You can find them best on Instagram. Go on Instagram
Speaker 1: at Inglewood Mutual Aid. You can find them there and
Speaker 1: support mutual Aid. It's the one that we're going to
Speaker 1: save the universe, I think is through putting money in
Speaker 1: the hands of people who need it or putting resources
Speaker 1: in the hands of the people who need it. So
Speaker 1: Inglewood Mutual Aid. Even if you don't live in Inglewood,
Speaker 1: you can help people there. Thank you to Rabagrant Productions
Speaker 1: for helping me produce this. Thank you to Pushkin Industries
Speaker 1: for letting me host the podcast on their site on
Speaker 1: their network, and also thank you to who knows Best.
Speaker 2: Production, which is me and my wife. But you haven't
Speaker 2: seen her yet, so me yeah.
Speaker 1: And also shout out to Chris Dowd from Fishbone for
Speaker 1: the theme song. Check out the Who's with Me substack,
Speaker 1: which is the best place to keep up with everything
Speaker 1: against Santum Comedy dates September twenty fifth and twenty sixth, Stanford, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: October first, Stanford University, and November thirteenth, Bellingham, Washington. Thank
Speaker 1: you for tuning in and let's say what this week?
Speaker 1: Why don't you do something good for yourself, for your neighborhood,
Speaker 1: for your community, and you know, for the world.
Speaker 2: Thanks