00:00:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Harvey Mason Jr. Grew up steeped in music. His father, Harvey Mason Senior, is one of the greatest drummers ever, having made a half of Herbie Hancock's Headhunter's Rhythm Section and played on countless sessions through the seventies and eighties, and after a quick but memorable detour through college hoops, Harvey Mason Jr. Has continued to build a fascinating life in music, starting where many great careers begin writing jingles. From those humble origins, he built an incredible production and songwriting resume, penning and producing songs for Retha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber, Beyonce, and many more, and his film work expands soundtracks for Dreamgirls, Straight out of Compton, Pitch Perfect in the latest Michael Jackson biopic. But in January twenty twenty, things took an unexpected turn. The Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammy Awards, installed him as the interim and eventually full time CEO. He stepped into the role at a moment of profound institutional crisis in stet about remaking it from the inside, expanding membership, eliminating secret voting committees, and pushing the organization to become more diverse, transparent, and reflective of the full breath of modern music. On today's episode, to sit down with Harvey Mason Junior to trace the full arc of the journey from ASU Steve Kerr to writing jingles in his dorm room, to the studio where Michael Jackson made Invincible, and then to one of the most powerful administrative chairs in the music industry. This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's my conversation with Harvey Mason Jr. This is incredible underappreciated fact about you that you went to the Final four with Arizona nineteen eighty eight.

00:02:07
Speaker 2: Don't say the date That just kills me.

00:02:10
Speaker 3: I mean no, like this is this old guy you know.

00:02:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, we did go to the Phonal four and eighty eight playing with Steve Kerr. Yeah yeah, with Loud Olsen.

00:02:17
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, with a you know, like a legendary coach. I mean that's it's wild.

00:02:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, Hall of Fame coach. He was such an important person in my life, no question, one of my mentors, difference makers. He set the standard for a lot of things in my life, a lot of elements of what I try and accomplish. Now, I'm still looking back to things that I learned from coach Olsen or in some instances, Steve, or my other teammates, you know, Sean Elliott and Kenny Loft and all these great athletes and great young men were my teammates, and we still stay in close touch, and so we share our successes, our challenges, We talk family and life and careers.

00:02:53
Speaker 2: So, wow, good group.

00:02:55
Speaker 1: It must have been well, not shockings wrong word, but it must have been fun to see the success Steve Kerrat and basketball over the years.

00:03:02
Speaker 3: Right, it was fun and it was exciting, but it was not anywhere close to shocking, because at every step you knew Steve was going to be amazing, whether it was as a basketball player, which he was truly amazing college. You would have never thought he would play in the pros. He went in the pros, was amazing, finished playing there, winning a ton of championships, and then he went into you know, the business of basketball, and he was a GM for Phoenix, and I was like, how are you going to be a GM. You've never been an assistant GM, You've never been like in the front office. He just went from playing to being the GM. Then he went to broadcasting. Never broadcast the game in his life. But then he was partner with Marv Albert and the whole thing in the A team for it was a great It was a great team, yeah, and very successful there. And then he said I'm going to go into coaching and then very successful there. So he was a special guy and we all recognized it at a very early stage in our careers together. You know, you're eighteen. I was eighteen when I got Arizona and Steve was there, and I learned so many lessons from him, and as I said, the other guys on the team as well. We all lifted each other, but Steve was special.

00:04:05
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:04:06
Speaker 1: And what was what was your role on the team. I'm just curious.

00:04:10
Speaker 3: My role changed from the time I got there. I was a highly recruited scorer, you know, I led the state of California and scoring for two years in a row. And I had a ton of offers and opportunities, and I chose Arizona because, well, first my mom loved Ludolfs and he thought he had great Hairy came in the living room and convinced my family, but I went to Arizona as a highly touted scorer. When I got to Arizona, I quickly realized I wasn't as good as I thought I was, And I learned some of those lessons from guys like Steve or Sean or Kenny, and I realized I had to work hard. So my role was kind of the up and comer. I would come in off the bench. I started my sophomore year. I started a couple of years there, but I was never a big score. So I became a defender. I became a very vocal and passionate team advocate or leader, and then ultimately it was you know, athlete, defensive stopper. I was very quick, I played a little bit of the point guard, a little bit of the two guard, and I was a pretty decent shooter.

00:05:08
Speaker 2: But for a great score in college.

00:05:10
Speaker 1: Wow, was it tough to adjust your mindset?

00:05:14
Speaker 3: It was, and being eighteen, my mindset wasn't very adjustable. Maybe, and it was a time where you come in thinking that you're the best, and you realize quite quickly that there's a difference between where.

00:05:28
Speaker 2: I was and the best.

00:05:29
Speaker 3: And I've told the story, but I remember the first night of being on campus, we had to go down to study table. And when you go to study table, at the bottom of the arena, you walk by the basketball courts and study table start I think at seven, and I looked out on the arena floor and I saw Steve shooting from like ten feet out, just like warming up, and I went into study table's mandatory for refreshmens. We did two and a half hours or two hours of studying. So now it's nine or nine thirty and I'm leaving and I look out in the court when I'm walking out, and he's still out there shooting, and now he's in the three point line. I watch him for about ten fifteen minutes, and he didn't miss wow for like maybe fifteen minutes, and so I quickly realized that.

00:06:04
Speaker 2: There was work that needed to be done.

00:06:06
Speaker 3: I started to do some of that work, and I definitely focused a lot, and as a team, we all were very conscientious and we wanted to win and we wanted to be better. We had a real tight bond in a brotherhood. But there were certain things that I probably would have done differently looking back now, but absolutely no regret. It's an amazing career. I learned so much. I spent so much memorable time with great guys, great coaching staff. You know, my my first wife had my kids, so a lot of things came as a result of playing basketball there.

00:06:33
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Man, let's reset to music. You have. Your pedigree in music is also, I mean incredible. Your dad is one of the great drummers in my mind ever. In my mind too, him and Paul Jackson together bar Nune have to be top one of the one of the best rhythm sections of the time.

00:06:57
Speaker 3: It's very nice, easy to say, I kind of agree with you, but I'm biased.

00:07:01
Speaker 1: You're biased, but it's it's hard not to. I mean when you talk, I mean they're like the definition of pocket.

00:07:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there were some records that they played on together that was pretty spectacular.

00:07:13
Speaker 2: And yeah, they had a good lock.

00:07:15
Speaker 1: Ye. What was around your house when you're growing up musically? Tell me about the musical upbringing you.

00:07:21
Speaker 3: Man, it was the best way to come up because there's instruments all over the places. We had pianos and basses and drums. We had a drum set in my house, which is like, probably not good for the neighbors, was great for me really good sound system because my dad was making records at this time, and so he was listening to references and things. We had nice speakers and of course the turntable with all the records because my dad was a session musician also, so when he would play on a record, we would get a copy of it. So he's built up a pretty good collection of thousands of records and collection crazy all different types of genres, different types of artists. And so I grew up in a household with a lot of music. My mom little known fact about my mom, she was also a musician. She was a trombone player and she was the first female in the brass section at the Berkeley School of Music. And so I grew up with two musical parents, parents that were working professionally in the music business. So I would go to work with my dad. Not only was music at my house, everywhere I went with my dad was around great music.

00:08:17
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:08:17
Speaker 1: Being a female horn player at that time too, was never happened. Yeah, it's pretty that's a tough gig, yeah.

00:08:24
Speaker 3: And then just the racial dynamic at the time was also a tough gig for my mom to meet and marry a black guy. In Boston at the time, was probably not Probably was definitely slightly controversial. In fact, it was federally illegal for them to have interracial sex at that time in nineteen sixty seven. It wasn't until sixty eight that that was even allowed, and I was conceived in sixty seven, So when you think about that, it was a tough time for both my folks, but especially the racial issues and then my mom being the only female in the brass department.

00:08:57
Speaker 2: But she killed it. She was great musician, that's amazing.

00:09:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so she would they were they the type of parents who would talk you through what you were listening to and explain things to you or.

00:09:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, if I asked, and I was pretty curious, but a lot of it was just me reading the credits, listening to the records, and I would ask my dad a lot of questions about how it was made and how the session went. And then I would go with my dad to a lot of sessions. Yeah, I would go to the studio when I was seven, eight nine years old, I'm spending summer vacations going with my dad, sleeping under the console, you know, getting under the pianos and you know, just seeing what was going on. So I had a very fortunate I'm very very lucky and thankful that i had that kind of upbringing.

00:09:33
Speaker 1: Which sessions were you able to go?

00:09:35
Speaker 2: Do? All of them?

00:09:36
Speaker 3: And if I had to name them, I don't think I could, but a lot of the Quincy Jones stuff because my dad worked a lot with Quincy and the brothers Johnson and Patty Austin and Michael Jackson and all those things.

00:09:46
Speaker 2: A lot of you.

00:09:46
Speaker 3: Know, my dad works a lot with David Foster and Seawind Horns and all the rhythm section guys that you were talking a lot about. Those were just the people that were hanging out of my house all the time as a kid. Yeah, getting a chance to meet the people in the creas it was weird for me because I just I didn't fan out on them because they were just all the people that were around, and I just thought everybody's dad was making music and everyone's dad was recording themselves and putting stuff out. And it didn't really lock in until I aspired to do what they did and I realized how hard it was and how special it was, and how uniquely talented you have to be to accomplish the level of success that my dad was able to have.

00:10:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, you had your own cool career music had obviously a love of music, love of basketball. You have success in college with basketball, But when for you did a career music start to feel like that's what you wanted.

00:10:37
Speaker 3: Well, while I was in college at Arizona, I had a system in my dorm room, a little keyboard and made a keyboard a computer. I was programming always because I grew up playing piano, and I actually wrote one of my first songs when I was I think nine or ten years old.

00:10:51
Speaker 1: I wrote for Washington song. Yeah.

00:10:54
Speaker 3: So the song that I wrote I groverheard, obviously because my dad probably played it for him and put on a good, good sales pitch. But I'd always played music, written songs, but I was more doing it as something that I enjoyed. Basketball was always my day to day passion. So near the end of my college basketball career, again knowing that I had a setup in my dormom, I tore my ACL. So that was the end of my basketball days. And in that time, this is in nineteen ninety. ACL repair surgery is very hard to come back from it. It would take you like maybe eighteen months to do, and I didn't have any more eligibility left. So I was done playing basketball and I started making music really as therapy. I had this keyboard and I was writing. I was super depressed. I've been playing basketball since I was about eleven twelve years old, practicing every day, dreaming about playing in the NBA, working with my father on my game. And it was over literally in one day. And so there was a year of me just really being in my head and not knowing what my life was meant for and what was I going to do, and had I used my time wisely? And I started making music as an outlet. And so at that point it wasn't hey, this is my next chapter, this is a career for me. It was just trying to survive and trying to get through the days and stay off the couch from watching soap operas.

00:12:14
Speaker 2: I'm going to go make music.

00:12:16
Speaker 3: So a couple months into that process, actually about eight months into that kind of down period, someone asked me to make a jingle for a local business in Tucson, Arizona, and they said, well, we'll give you seven hundred and fifty bucks. And I was like, oh, this is easy because I'm making music in my room anyways. So I made a little jingle they paid me, and that was really the first taste beyond writing that song way back when I was young, where I said, you know, this could be something else that I could do that I love to do. I feel like I have a little bit of a talent for it. So I started writing jingles and they were paying me money. Every time I write jingle for a burger store or a break shop or a fitness gym, they would pay me some money. And I said, Okay, this is great, but I don't want to just write jingles. I want to make records like my family, like my dad, like all the great people I grew around grew up listening to. So I took all the money that I made doing jingles and I bought equipment. I bought keyboards, I brought drum machines, tape recorders, and I had built this little studio in my one bedroom apartment at the time, And that's when I really started getting motivated to enter the music business properly.

00:13:18
Speaker 1: How do you move from jingle writer to I'm going to actually make records of the caliber of the records I'm used to growing up around having You know.

00:13:27
Speaker 3: As I said, I was very fortunate because I grew up around a level of excellence that was just imbued into my musical DNA, and I had an understanding of what it took to become a professional or excellent musician. But I also had the training that I got from sports, And if I hadn't had that sports training, I don't know if I would have accomplished what I was able to accomplish, because there's that competitiveness. And also coach Olsen had a way of making sure you expected more than you thought you could give. I had a certain set of expectations for myself as an athlete, and Coach Olsen was like, Okay, you're here, but I think you should be here, and I'm like, there, I can't get there, that's impossible. And somehow he would instill that in you. And so musically I had the same thing. When I was doing jingles, I was always thinking about how can I make them better? How can I start to graduate towards the next version of excellence, And that ultimately translated to songwriting and record making, And you say, how did I get there? I knew I didn't want to write thirty second songs. I wanted to write full songs. I wanted to express what I was thinking or what I was feeling, And so the idea became, I'll do these jingles to make money, but I really want to develop into a songwriter and a producer, and that became my goal.

00:14:43
Speaker 1: And about that time, what was out musically that you were really drawn to, Well.

00:14:50
Speaker 3: It would have been you know, it was later in the Michael Jackson time, but Michael and Prince were my two favorite artists early. But then there was Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis and La and Babyface and jo Toicy and DeVante Swing and Teddy Riley and even into some Christopher Krawl and Air Supply and Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald. So all these different artists kind of were smashed together along with the stuff I grew up on, which was all the Quincy records and you know the dude, I don't know if you remember that record, And as a producer and a songwriter, he was one of my first inspirations and mentors. And I was very fortunate. Again I hate to keep saying it, but I was lucky. I grew up in an environment I have to admit that gave me access to people that I learned from that I was able to absorb information. But Quincy was somebody that would always say, maybe not explicitly, but he would imply that if you're a great producer, you have to rely on the talents of others, and you have to use your judgment and your discernment and your taste and your style to put the right people together and then let them create and with them build and then be selective. And he did that through his career. There's all these different sounds, and it's the future of music because you're hearing things blended together, You're hearing things that maybe you hadn't heard before, You're being exposed to different types of music. So that was one of Quincy's I think, most valuable legacies.

00:16:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really was a blended like you know in ways that kind of prime you to you know, hear like a Timbaland beat twenty years on from the Dude or whatever, you know what I mean, Like all those cool like Middle Eastern and Indian samples like Timbland and them were doing.

00:16:24
Speaker 2: Matt he called it what did Quincy Caully call it? The Global gumbo.

00:16:30
Speaker 1: Is that what he called it.

00:16:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would mix.

00:16:31
Speaker 3: Up things from different parts of the world and make a global gumbo out of it.

00:16:35
Speaker 2: And you hear that a lot.

00:16:36
Speaker 3: To your point, people grabbing things from different genres or different parts.

00:16:40
Speaker 2: Of the world and using it in their art.

00:16:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you also mentioned a succession of guys that from your era that were incredible, Davante Swing and all these guys, so you kind of knew that was that's what you were up against in terms if you were going to break into music. Yeah, do you try to compete with them, being a competitor or how.

00:17:01
Speaker 2: It's exactly it.

00:17:02
Speaker 3: I took everything I learned in sports and I put it to play in music, which is not normal. I don't think most creative people thinking I got to beat this guy, kind of beat that guy, you know the thing, and he let me create something I'm feeling in the mood. But I was very competitive. I took that training and I brought it with me into the music business. And maybe that's the wrong way to do it, that's the wrong thing to be doing when you're making art, but it served me because I would be in the studio every day working just like I was shooting baskets, just like Steve Kerr was shooting threes. I was in the studio morning, noon, night, trying to get better, and I had a really fortunate experience.

00:17:37
Speaker 2: I had an A and R person, you know.

00:17:38
Speaker 3: I used to run around LA throwing my cassettes into people's mailboxes. I'd follow people with convertibles that I knew worked at labels and throw the stuff in the back seat. I had one guy that I'd been badgering for so long. He invited me to his office. His name is Guy Abrahams, and I'll never forget him. And he said, you've been chasing me for months. Come to my office. And so I played him a song and he said, okay, it's pretty good, but listen to this, and he put in another another cassette and I listened to it, and he said, now listen to yours, and he listened to mine. He said, do you hear the difference? He said, yeah, there's a difference. But I don't have a studio like that. I don't have an engineer, I don't have all the He says, well, and tell you your music sounds as good as that music. Don't bother me anymore. And so that was a real moment. That was a tipping point moment for me because I went back to two sound cause commuting back and forth, I'll drive out to La stay with a friend, sleep on a couch, stay with my dad. And then when he gave me that input, I went back to Arizona and I stayed there for three months and I just worked and programmed and wrote and did more songs than I took a couple more months of like comparing myself to other things. And then when I came back to La, I played the same gentleman my new music. It's probably been maybe six months had passed, and he says, you did it, You're ready, and he gave me a job producing an artist on Motown Records. And so that was really the impetus or the beginning of my career, was that guy telling me that the music wasn't.

00:18:56
Speaker 1: Up to par wow, And what was that record you did?

00:18:59
Speaker 3: The group was called Impromptu, and it was an artist that was back on Motown probably would have been ninety four, ninety three, somewhere in there. It was a trumpet player and a rap artist. So they came together and the group was called Impromptu. They were really cool in the time, and so I got to remix one of their songs. They'd ended up producing a song on their record.

00:19:19
Speaker 1: And I guess not too long after that you connect with Dark Child Ronnie Jurgen's.

00:19:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was probably in ninety eight, so about three or four four years after that, and I'd been writing songs since that first record and had some nice placements. I can't remember all the artists, but ultimately I wrote a song and Brandy heard the song, and song was called Truthfully. I'd written it with a guy named Mark Nelson and turned out that Rodney was executive producing the Brandy album, and so Rodney called me and said, I heard the song Truthfully, I want it for Brandy's record.

00:19:52
Speaker 2: You cool for us to record it, And.

00:19:55
Speaker 3: I don't know if it was a gamble or I just was feeling extra brave.

00:19:58
Speaker 2: I said, I mean, you can record it, but I got to produce.

00:20:02
Speaker 3: And if I was probably a little smarter or less naive, I would have said, yes, thank you, please take the song, record it, but I really wanted to stay involved, and I also realized it was an opportunity to learn and get into another door. So yeah, I said, yeah, you can cut it, but I want to produce, and Rodney said, well, how would we co produce it? I was like cool, and so that's how I started with Dark Child.

00:20:20
Speaker 1: Wow. So what was that experience?

00:20:22
Speaker 2: Like?

00:20:23
Speaker 1: Like co producing with Dark Child?

00:20:25
Speaker 2: It was great.

00:20:25
Speaker 3: I wasn't like freaked out by it because at that point, I've been making records for what probably eight years, seven years, and I felt pretty confident I'd done the hours, I'd spent the time, and again, I'd been working with other artists and then growing up with artists my whole life. I wasn't like, oh my god, it's Brandy or it's Rodney Jerkins.

00:20:43
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:20:43
Speaker 3: I was respectful always because I think artists are the most special and spectacular people. But I was able to interact and collaborate with Rodney, I think in a productive in a very cool way, because that was the first record we did together, and I ended up working with him for two years and from that day, I don't know if we spent more than a couple of days apart from each other for a couple of years.

00:21:04
Speaker 1: And what were the songs you guys ended up doing together in that run?

00:21:09
Speaker 3: Was in ninety eight to two thousand, and that run was everything. That was all that Tony Brax and he wasn't mad enough for me. It was Destiny's Child, Say my Name. I can't even remember all the songs we did. We did so many artists and then every week was another artist. And then we also started the Michael Jackson record Invincible in ninety eight, and we ended up working on that record for eighteen months, which was Michael's last record, So we did a couple hundred songs. I'm sure through that period.

00:21:36
Speaker 1: Were you around Michael?

00:21:37
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, for eighteen months.

00:21:39
Speaker 1: Wow. And I imagine you hadn't met him when you were younger, right.

00:21:43
Speaker 3: I had met him when I was younger because my father played on I don't remember one of the records or a project that he was doing, so and through Quincy i'd made him, but we were not friendly. He didn't know me from Adam, but I'd been around him.

00:21:55
Speaker 1: Wow. But now to work with him on a project crazy, What was that like?

00:22:02
Speaker 3: It was one of the best experiences of my life because it perpetuated the idea and the culture that I had been trying to build around how I made music, which was there's no detail too small, there's no level of expectation that's too high, and Michael lived at In everything that he did, he would never settle. He was always pushing the boundaries. He would always he would go back and do anything a hundred times. And being around that was right in line with my belief system and the way I wanted to make music. So it was a very natural I won't say partnership because I was clearly not his partner, but it was a very natural working relationship. And again I was fortunate. I had been around big artists. I'd been in the studio my whole life, so unlike a lot of people that would come into those sessions, I wasn't nervous and freaking out, like, oh my god, what am I going to do? I can't look at Michael Jackson. I was able to just be creative and collaborate. And also I was there in some degree to support Rodney. Rodney was the main producer. I worked for him, so I was able to bring some value I like to think and had an incredible experience, and I learned so much from both Rodney and Michael. But again, it just continued the tradition of that was set by Quincy, that was set by coach Liutolsen. That was then set by other people that I've been around, which is you don't just do something.

00:23:22
Speaker 2: To do it.

00:23:22
Speaker 3: You do it to be excellent at it, and you have intention, and you improve and you iterate and you try and make something special. And I never wanted to be a guy that just cranked out a bunch of songs. I wanted to make things that were special.

00:23:34
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:23:35
Speaker 1: Where was Michael's head at at that point?

00:23:38
Speaker 3: He had come off the biggest records in the world and he wanted to make the next.

00:23:41
Speaker 2: Biggest record in the world.

00:23:43
Speaker 3: You know, he had done Dangerous, he'd done those records, and I think there was one after that.

00:23:47
Speaker 1: History, which is also jam and Lewis did a lot on the Yep.

00:23:51
Speaker 3: Yeah and Teddy did the Dangerous record. So this was a point where he'd had a gap between records. But I'll never forget he kept saying, we have to be the biggest selling record of all time. And that was how we walked into the studio every day and we would play a song for him and he said, I've heard a song like that before, and we would have a drum program playing any like those sounds don't sound like something I've never heard before. Make sounds that I've never heard before. I don't want something that I've heard before. So that was another lesson. You're not following your leading.

00:24:20
Speaker 1: That's insane. And were you with the project the whole, like, from beginning to end or.

00:24:24
Speaker 2: Not to the end?

00:24:25
Speaker 3: I was from the beginning. When Rodney first started, it was in nineteen ninety eight, and we ended in two thousand and the project continued after I left Dark Child for about I don't know, probably four or five months to complete the record, but we did I think forty songs forty five songs with Michael. A bunch of them are still in the can, which is interesting to see if they'll ever come out. And then when I left Dark Child, Rodney went on to finish that record. I think it took a couple more months. Wow, there was a lot of controversy around that record at that time in two thousand, Tommy Mottola was running Sony Records. We had spent a ton of money. I can't even imagine the millions of dollars we had spent on that Michael record. We were running three four studios at a time at Sony Records or Hit Factory, New York, and at that time we're using Sony digital digital tape machines thirty three forty eight they were called, and we had two of them in each room, and they were twenty five hundred bucks a day, and we were renting them for you know, there's six of them sitting there, and sometimes we wouldn't get records done in a day, or Michael might not feel in good voice and may not want to sing for a couple of days, and just running through money. So Tommy, really I will say, shut the project down, but he definitely was getting anxious and wanted us to turn into record. So there was some contentious times in that project that I left just near the end of that and then obviously rodden. You got it back on track and the record came out.

00:25:46
Speaker 1: Were you feeling nervous at all?

00:25:47
Speaker 3: I mean, Millions of All is always very nervous, mostly nervous about Tommy Mattola and you know, the Sony of it all never from Michael, and Michael was always very confident and he was very generous and reassuring. He's like, we're making something special. We can't rush that. There's no price tag on that. Yeah, Michael was very upset. I don't want maybe I'm spilling dirty laundry here, but Michael was upset that Tommy was trying to restrict you know, what he was putting out. And obviously they figured it out, but that was over my pay grade. And however that happened, I'm not sure when the record came out.

00:26:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all good.

00:26:21
Speaker 1: It's it's insane, man, that's insane.

00:26:24
Speaker 3: But also it was a different time in music, you know, and Tommy was dominant. Think of all the artists he had at Sony and all the records he was they were massive hits and he and Michael had I think, some great success together.

00:26:37
Speaker 1: So and it's funny because Michael was also the blueprint for everything that was hitting at that time, but also was maybe you know, viewed as past his prime a bit, even though he just had you know whatever, that screen record with Janet.

00:26:51
Speaker 3: And Yeah, I could sense some of that from him, where he felt like he was there was a pressure on him to perform the way he did before, and he was maybe a little bit nervous if he was going to be able to but covering that nervousness with confidence and excitement and drive and pushing.

00:27:07
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's wild, man.

00:27:09
Speaker 2: That was a great experience.

00:27:10
Speaker 1: That's wild. Then you go on and you start your own thing, right like you're the Underdogs.

00:27:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, just on the heels of Dark Child. I started a production company and linked up with a guy who actually had thought about joining Dark Child and wrote a couple of songs with us while we were at dark Child, but it ended up not working out. And his name was Damon Thomas, and Rodney always thought he's very talented, but I don't think he's part of dark Child. So after I left and I'd split from dark Child, Damon and I connected and wrote a song together and people liked it, and so that's how we started the Underdogs.

00:27:43
Speaker 1: It's incredible. We'll be right back with more from Harvard Mason Junior after the break. So how do you go from you know, it's already a pretty incredible trajectory, but then to do that and then in around the year two thousand and two thousand and one, and then to roughly a couple of decades later being the head of the recording Academy, that's another it's a little ways in, but that's another wild left turn in your trajectory.

00:28:17
Speaker 3: Definitely not an expected or planned journey, but I do Maybe this is too philosophical, but I just kind of appreciate the moment and I don't try and predetermine every step. And I also believe, and I talk to my kids a lot about this, there's no wrong moves as long as you're not doing anything illegal or hurting yourself or somebody else. Like, if something comes in it feels like a challenge or interesting to you, then I encourage people to try that. Especially when you're coming through the early stages of your life, you can afford to try things and you can experiment. So once we were doing The Underdogs, we had had some success there, and a woman asked me if I would be interested in getting involved with the Recording Academy. We'd had success and made some little money and built a reputation. I thought the Academy was really cool because, well, honestly, first I thought it was cool because I could vote for myself to win a Grammy. So that's why I first joined.

00:29:23
Speaker 1: The reason I joined, yeah, I mean that was the reason value.

00:29:26
Speaker 2: Oh, I can vote a Producer of the Year. Yeah, I want to join.

00:29:29
Speaker 3: But I quickly realized that it's a really great organization that is entirely built and exists only to serve music people. And I was my whole life. You know from our talk, you know I'm a music person from the time I was nine years old, and my family were music people. So being a part of the Recording Academy was instantly exciting and appealing, just as a board member, just first as a member, then an elected board member, then a national officer, and then they elected me to be the chair of the Board of the Recording Academy, and I was honored and thrilled because I knew I could serve our community in that role. And then there came a time where they asked me if I would be the CEO, and that changes from a volunteer position to a real job and coming in the building and.

00:30:14
Speaker 2: Working directly with the staff.

00:30:15
Speaker 3: And so that was a decision that was again not planned, is not something I was aspiring to do or looking forward to, but I saw it as an opportunity to give back and to serve and to make a difference in music people's lives, and that's what excited me at that point in my life.

00:30:30
Speaker 1: Also was a bit of a precarious time to come in like it might have felt like I it could have felt also, I mean not that you seemed to be a person who takes into account what could go wrong, which is based on all the moves you make in life.

00:30:45
Speaker 2: But like you know, there was I've been accused of that.

00:30:49
Speaker 1: But it also was like they didn't come in at a very easy time to be CEO of the According Academy. I'll say, I'll say it that way.

00:30:56
Speaker 3: It was a really tough time. But you remember, as the chair, I had seen what had happened and why it had gotten to where it was, and I also saw the good stuff. I saw how important impactfully the organization was. So for me it was actually a really good time because we were depleted, we were looked down on at that point to some degree, and we had room to go. And as you said, I'm definitely the eternal optimist, and I saw exactly what needed to be done and what could be done, and so I just jumped in and I'd say, we've come a long way in the last six years.

00:31:29
Speaker 1: So when you did join, can you explain that dichotomy you just mentioned where it's sort of the recording Academy is sort of colored this way, but you're also seeing all the great that it's done over you know, the decade decad and a half that you've been working with them. How did it end up sort of bifurcated that way where it's like, there's some things that need to be cleaned up, and then there's also all this great stuff that you.

00:31:56
Speaker 3: Know, some of it was the lack of storytelling and awareness of what the Recording Academy actually did. Everybody really knew us for the show and the Grammy Awards and the nominations and the winds and the snubs and who lost and who didn't get what they got and who wasn't represented accurately or equitably, and then there's all the other work that was being done. So one of the first things I realized is this is an amazing organization.

00:32:18
Speaker 2: They've been around.

00:32:19
Speaker 3: Sixty two years when I got there, and hundreds of millions of dollars into the community. And the way of age is philanthropy or people who needed help, pain and rent or bills, medical bills, education, advocacy. All the things that were happening every year, whether or not somebody wanted Grammy or not these things were going on. So the first order was for us to figure out how to tell that story inside our own industry, inside our own community, because everybody was so focused on who was winning and who was losing, and they were losing focus on why the organization existed, has to lift up music and to the benefit of music people. So because I was from the industry and I had relationships with artists, I produced most of the artists that were angry and some of the artists that were happy. I spent a lot of time my first couple of years just talking to people and explaining why the organizations, why I'm here, because they would say, heart of you're crazy, get out of there, and I said, no, this is important, this is important.

00:33:14
Speaker 1: I'm the only one who thought it would be a yeah, it could be a strange move to make.

00:33:18
Speaker 3: And it was a strange move, but I knew how important it was. And I'm not trying to overinflate my own contribution to that or even the importance of the Grammy Organization in the world. There's a lot of things going on in the world that are very problematic and challenging, but when it comes to the music community and doing right by music people. I'm very proud of what the organization has done and over the last six years, has evolved into doing. And I think that's important. I think it's important. Based on all the other discrepancies or challenges or politics, or inequities or struggles that we have in society, music matters and the magic of a musician or a creator is all powerful to me. And maybe I'm overinflating that, but I truly believe it. And that's why the organization and serving music people and making sure there's space and a healthy ecosystem in a way for them to make a living and protections, that's important and that's why I'm passionate about it.

00:34:20
Speaker 1: I don't think you're overstated in it at all. I mean, you know, you think about music has been such a driver of culture, American culture for you know, eighties, eight seventy and.

00:34:35
Speaker 2: It says the phonograph Really yeah, you think about.

00:34:37
Speaker 1: It many decades, you know. I'm concerned about, like, how do we make music fun again in a way both for like the artist and for the consumer or the fan. You know, so much of the discussion is AI and streaming and sales numbers, and we kind of lose tracks, sometimes of yeah, just that music's fun.

00:34:56
Speaker 3: I would imagine the young people listening to music think music is really fun. I think we might be looking at it through our lens of it used to be like this. Yeah, And that's the one thing as a creator, as a business lead. And I'm sure you've experienced this, and I know you've probably subscribed to the same philosophy. As soon as you get caught up in looking at it through the lens of how it used to be. I think it's dangerous. I think it's a little bit risky. There's always the nostalgic and that's okay, and that's healthy. But I think music's incredibly fun. And I'm sure a lot of music people who are making it now are loving it the same way I loved it when.

00:35:31
Speaker 2: I first started.

00:35:32
Speaker 3: They're excited, they wake up dreaming about it, they can't wait to get in what used to be the studio now is probably their laptop to make a new song. And regardless of what the technology is or the delivery mechanism or how it's consumed, music has the same power. Music has the same effect on people. You still see them dancing to it at their weddings. You see them crying to it in their car after a breakup. This music is incredible, So I think what you're saying is is definitely different. How it's made is different. And the challenge that we have, you and I as lovers of music and people who grew up listening to incredible artists and artistry late on a record or on a cassettra CD, is is the music being made now? Do they have the same care behind it? Do they have the same intention, the same talent behind it? And I don't think that's what's as important. I think it's more important to say what is being made, what is being created. Of course there's issues around AI, and I'm not dismissing those concerns. But I remember when I was a young kid, like hip hop music that wasn't even looked at like music, Like, oh, that's not music, it's just temper as a fad, that's not you don't have to have any talent. They're not even singing, they're not even playing instruments, they're just spinning records. And when I was in that era, I was like, man, that's an incredible talent. These hip hop artists are amazing I would listen to them like how do they do that? But the people before me didn't even think that was a talent. So I think that's the challenge we have is to look at how music is being made now and make sure we recognize that it is a true talent to be able to create things that move people today.

00:37:05
Speaker 1: So I guess how you know, with the new technology now and some of like what we're starting to see as like a lot of souno and I mean we're beyond not just not going to the studio anymore making this stuff at home. How are you guys thinking about that in terms of the organization.

00:37:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, We're always going to champion and support and celebrate human creativity end of statement.

00:37:34
Speaker 2: How humans use tools is.

00:37:36
Speaker 3: Something that's going to change, and we're going to continue to look at every year. You know, we're fortunate we have a board of trustees and a chair and membership groups and awards and nominations committees that all look at this stuff every day and they're in the weeds saying, Okay, are we doing it right?

00:37:49
Speaker 2: Are we getting it right?

00:37:51
Speaker 3: And so as an organization, we'll always try and stay ahead of what's happening, especially where we are now with the bias for action and really making sure we're paying attention and seeing around corners. But we are going to celebrate human creativity. But we understand AI is a tool that's going to be used, yeah fact, And if we try and pretend like it's not or and ban it and say we can't have AI in our industry, I think we will have missed the plot and we will have missed the opportunity to acknowledge how people are making music. It's going to be a choice. I'm not saying everybody's going to be using new technologies. There's going to be some people that don't want to use it, and I'm really good with that. As you can imagine, there's also going to be people that see it as an opportunity to come into the business in a time when maybe they otherwise would not be able to do so, which is very analogous to when I started, I was making records on tape, but then when pro tools came out, a whole group of people were able to now sing because they could do unlimited takes and they could put auto tune on their voice. They could chop things together, whereas before they couldn't and that created a whole new, exciting influx of talented people. So where we are again is celebrate human creativity. We're not going to allow AI to overrun our members, our human creators, our human singers, our human songwriters. But for now, we see it as a viable tool towards creation, and there's a line that we have to decide where that is how much can be used?

00:39:13
Speaker 1: Do you know where that line is? Right now?

00:39:15
Speaker 2: Right now?

00:39:16
Speaker 3: It's you know, we feel like we have an understanding of where the line is. It's a majority of human creativity, and that can be interpreted a couple of different ways, And for now we're going to leave it a little bit not ambiguous, but flexible because technology is changing so quickly, and while the Copyright Office still also doesn't know what the threshold is for a human creativity and a copyrightable moment. Is it two prompts? Is it five prompts? Is it a prompt and a temple change and a key change? There's so many uncertainties. What I want to make sure we do as an organization, what I think our board and our elected leadership want to do as an organization, and make sure we're honoring music in the way that it's being made and created while still maintaining the ultimate respect to the human creativity, because that's important. And now I've said it so many times. A computer is not going to replace what's in here. A computer is not going to have that interpersonal sperience that we have and be able to regurgitate that just because they've ingested a bunch of songs. What computers can do is make some cool, algorithmic sounding music that I think will hopefully amplify or enhance what we as humans can make and inspire us to do something new and different. What's going to be really differentiating us from generative music is going to be something that the computer hasn't ever been able to figure out, They've probably never heard before. And so I think there's a great opportunity for us as a creative community to take this challenge, take this moment, and really push the boundaries of how we're creating and what we're creating.

00:40:48
Speaker 1: Do you worry at all? That? And then interim and this time where we're sort of figuring out where the line is and exactly where our house is all going to shake out legally, culturally, within the academy. I could see easily us getting in a place where people just assume things are being made, you know, like where people assume that more ais maybe being used and is or maybe it is and maybe like or maybe we get to a point where there is a lot of you know, quote unquote AI slop making it into playlists or whatever or even onto records that might end up becoming nominated Grammy nominated.

00:41:27
Speaker 2: You know.

00:41:27
Speaker 1: So do you worry in the interim as we're figuring it all this out the quality control of in the perception for fans, we worry.

00:41:33
Speaker 3: We don't worry about the quality control because that's really not our job. We worry about making sure that there's guardrails in place because my version of quality might not be your version of quality. I don't think we should be regulating that. But what we do want to make sure is that there are rules in place that protect human creativity. And yes, we worry about it every day, and it's something that we talk about around our awards about submissions. You know, how do we categorize music? How do we talk about as their language that we can attach to certain things? Are the thresholds that people need to declare before they enter. So all those things are talked about on a daily, weekly basis. And as I said, it's moving so quickly. We have to be diligent and we have to stay on top of it. And I can tell you we absolutely are.

00:42:18
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, we're getting into like a like a trust but verify trust, but verify stage of things.

00:42:25
Speaker 3: It's just weird, it is, and it's going to continue to be weird. There's you know, detection tools that we're experimenting with, and I know other people are as well. There's requests that we're making on the advocacy level federally, you know, legislation that we'd like to see put in place. There's labeling things that we're asking from streamers or other places people get their music. So all those things are things we talk about and think about to make sure that the consumers aware because that's a big part of it. We want to make sure there's not deception. If you're using AI, you think that's part of your process and you want to do it, I think that's okay if you can tell the consumers how it's being used, as long as you're not infringing on somebody else's copyright, using somebody else's music, and ingesting training on that we're outputting it and not can considering where you were learned, where you learn from. Also making sure if you're using an artist's voice or likeness is there, an approval is there, remuneration is there the right credit. So those are all things that we think about.

00:43:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, after the break the rest of my conversation with Harvey Mason Jr. We're an interesting time where I feel like a lot of the traditional gatekeepers of music, and again I don't want to I don't not using gatekeeper in a bad way. I'm talking about people like Clive Davis who we just lost, or Pancy Jones we've talked about, or Mo Austin who just like people who were kind of in their their taste sort of dictated what got down to the consumer level and had a lot of success with that. And certainly we're in a more decentralized era now. So do you do you view the recording academy as being needing to move in a more decentralized sort of way, or do do you sort of view it as being an arbiter for what is good in music? How do you think about that?

00:44:16
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I mean that's tough.

00:44:19
Speaker 3: What I view it as is a unique award given by your peers for excellence in any different field of recording arts and sciences. And we don't claim to say what is better than something else, or try and say this is the only way you do it, and this is how you make a successful record or song. We have roughly sixteen thousand voters, and those voters are all music professionals, so it's subjective and sometimes what they like might not be what the general public likes. And that's when we get into some of these times when people think, oh, well, the Academy snubbed something. Well, the Academy is made up of professional music people and those people are going to have opinions and tastes. And the reason that the voting membership is important is it's got to be diverse. It's got to spread across different genres of music. It has to have different people because, as I said, the two of us might not align on what is excellent.

00:45:13
Speaker 2: But if you get a big enough group, and you get a group of.

00:45:16
Speaker 3: People that have different likes and different experiences and different expertise, then you get I think a generally a good feel for a subjective outcome of what's excellent for that year. And so I don't think we need to change that drastically, because that's what makes us different is it's not a popularity contest. It's not about how many streams you had, how many journalists review your thing five stars, about the people who make music every day, writers, producers, engineers, singers, people who work in our business. They listen to the music and they decide what they like in any given year.

00:45:50
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, when you took over, you got rid of quote unquotes like sort of secret nominating or how would you.

00:45:57
Speaker 2: The nominations committees. Yeah, they called them the secret committees.

00:46:01
Speaker 1: The secret committee was that like, internally we.

00:46:04
Speaker 3: Didn't call it that people did and they were trying to demonize those committees, and those committees were really important, they sort to purpose for a time. And the reason they thought they were secret was because we never disclosed who was on those committees, because we were afraid of those people getting lobbied or getting squeezed to make sure they're giving people nominations. But those committees were made up of music professionals, and so we would have a nominating committee for pop one for rock, one for jazz, and on that committee would be the leading jazz creators or leading pop creators, and they would not decide who got the nomination, but ultimately narrow down the field to some degree. And it was a step that was put in place in a time when maybe the membership wasn't as diverse, and it wasn't as experienced across different genres of music. And at that time, when I first got here, you could vote anywhere on the ballot.

00:46:52
Speaker 2: You could.

00:46:53
Speaker 3: You might have had a song in the nineteen sixties and you're still voting for best Hip Hop Artists, and you might not even know that genre, but you recognize a name, and so the nomination review committees would try to prevent that from happening. But once we started, as you were touching, you know, and I got in the role, we quickly realized that the nomination review committees were no longer necessary, provided that we could upgrade our membership and evolve our membership make sure that they were all requalified. So we requalified. Ninety nine percent of all of our members have been requalified, and I think the last percentage has probably done now as well, which means you have to be relevant, you have to have music in the last five years, you have to have the right amount of credits, and your application has to be re reviewed. So all of our members got that. And then what we also changed is you can't just graze across the ballot and see who you like. Oh I know that person, I'm going to vote for them, because that's not what.

00:47:45
Speaker 2: This is about.

00:47:46
Speaker 3: It's about do you know the music, listen to the music, and again subjectively, try and decide which one do you think is the best for the year. So we changed the membership, we changed the way we voted, and not allowed us to eliminate the noms committees.

00:47:59
Speaker 1: And do you feel like it's gotten to a place where's more the results are more pure now, or the winners or the like. It's where it's kind of really.

00:48:08
Speaker 3: I don't know if pure is the right word, And you and the listeners could probably tell me if you think we've gotten better.

00:48:13
Speaker 2: I think we've.

00:48:14
Speaker 3: Had more consistency and probably more realistic outcomes based around what's going on in the industry today, less like at a left field shock surprise, like how in the heck did that person even get nominated or let alone win, there's less of those. But also, you know, some of what's cool about the Grammys is a discovery and you get to see something that maybe you weren't aware of, and all of a sudden, there's a light shine on something new and you're like, oh, that's really cool. I love that. But I do think because of the membership's evolution and because of some of the rules that are in place, we are doing better. I want to continue to improve, and we're always looking at our membership, and the membership has to change, by the way, when new genres come in, we have to make sure we have the voters that correspond to those genres so they can evaluate it accurately.

00:49:03
Speaker 2: Because if we have.

00:49:04
Speaker 3: All one type of voter and then all of a sudden this type of music comes in, we're slipping back into how we used to be, where people didn't have the ears for that music. So we'll continue to watch that and try and evolve.

00:49:15
Speaker 1: In certainly the last decade or so, I mean just with so much, so much with sort of these regional world scenes, yeah, becoming you know, K pop or afro beats or eat psych.

00:49:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, we just introduced the Asian Pop Performance category and I think three years ago we did African performance category. So if you're going to have those categories, you really got to make sure you have the right voters, Otherwise you're doing them a disservice. And the reason we put those categories in is so that we can honor the music and so we can show respect to that music because it's happening, it's poppin, and we want to make sure it's part of what we're doing. But if we don't have the right outcomes and those genres, because we don't have the right membership, since we're messing.

00:49:52
Speaker 1: Up amazing over the next decade or so. What are you excited about in music and what are you most concerned about.

00:50:00
Speaker 3: I'm really excited about people having access to creating music and listening to music and discovery music. There's more music being listened to now than ever. I think that's a cool stat because I love music and I make music. I still am in the studio making music. So the fact that more people are enjoying it, that it's affecting more people, that's exciting. The idea that my niece calls me from Dallas and says, Uncle Harvey, I just made a song check it out and she sends it to me, and we can debate around whether or not you think that's healthy or okay, or should even be called music making, But the fact that she's coming into the world of creating and expressing herself through music, I think that's cool. Again, making sure that we take care of the legality and.

00:50:48
Speaker 1: Are you are you running the same test on your niece.

00:50:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, make sure you're signing the right things, they're giving credit. So I'm excited about those things. And some of that is also what makes me nervous. Does music become commoditized? Does it become too easy to create? Does it come too easy and disposable? Does it become something that is overlooked and just in the background. And I have faith that that's not going to be the case, because I think music is too powerful and too important and people who make music are, in my mind, the most special and so I worry less about that. But that is something that we all have to think about. And you mentioned the AI slop and what does that mean for listeners and what does that mean for our community of people who make music and have spent the ten thousand or in some other cases the forty thousand hours that it takes to really refine your craft and perfect your craft. And I still think there's huge value in that, and I would hate to see that lost. But we have to acknowledge things are going to change. They always have. Our industry has seen it time and time again. The way the music is made has changed, the way music is consumed has changed. And that is not stagnant and it's not binary. It's not either this or that. It's going to evolve, it's going to flow, it's going to grow, and as long as we can be respectful to the creative process and the people that are making music. I'm looking forward to what comes next and what the new sounds are. What's the new genre of music, what's the new way that we're going to listen to music and celebrate music. There's so many new possibilities.

00:52:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I hope you're right, man, I hope you're right. I think you're right.

00:52:29
Speaker 3: You know you know I'm right because music people are resilient. What do you think music people are going to stop making music?

00:52:35
Speaker 2: No?

00:52:36
Speaker 3: No, you know all the great records you've grown up listening to, those are the people. Those people are still out here. Making music, and we are being threatened and we're being challenged as creators, and I believe our people will rise that challenge. And I know throughout history of music. I mean when I came up, as I told you, people said your music's not good enough, it's not going to work. You're not good, got to be better. That is how all music people came up. I think you can talk to pretty much any artists and they've been they've been kicked into the dirt a time or two early in their career, and this is not the dissimilar to that. So I think there's some comparisons that can be made to this. Not saying that everybody should go run out and use AI, please don't. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is there's a disruption in technology that changes how people make what they make, and for us, it's jarring and it's like, oh my god, this is unacceptable. They said that about player pianos. Player pianos came out, Oh, it's going to ruin the industry because piano players aren't going to be able to play well. We still got all the piano players. Said that about synthesizers and samplers. They said that about DJs, they said that about hip hop, they said it about people programming on computers. I sat next to a guy on a plane the other day. He made a whole record on his laptop. Didn't even have a keyboard with black and white keys. He was doing it on his laptop. And so is this the next evolution of how people are going to make music, provided that we can get the guardrails in place, I would say it probably is. And there's going to be people who like to do it the traditional way, there can be people that like to blend them together, and there's going to be some that just are in the new mind.

00:54:09
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:54:10
Speaker 1: Just to move away from AI for a second, I do want to ask, is there anything that Recording Academy is not doing now that you like to see it doing or do better?

00:54:20
Speaker 3: Well, I'm the person that's very rarely, if ever, satisfied, and I'm always thinking what can we do better and how can we evolve? And at this point in my life and in the career of the Recording Academy, the goal is service, and so I do think that role is going to change over time based on needs of the community. You're seeing a need right now around AI. I know you were saying we're leaving AI, but could stay that. There's going to be other things that happen like that to our people, to our industry. And I don't pretend to think we're like the most powerful.

00:54:52
Speaker 2: Thing in the world.

00:54:53
Speaker 3: I mean, there's such a massive business behind us with labels imposing. But the role that we play as the Recording Academy Organization and the Grammy Organization, I do think it's going to be important that we keep our ears open and we're listening to our community. And that's why I'm thanking for our board and for other members that are our elected leadership, because they point us in the right director say, you know, Grammy Organization, you got to pay attention to this. This is happening to us, and that's where we jump into action. And that could be advocacy, that could be as you said, music care is give back, philanthropy, that could be education. But what I'm pleased and proud of is that we are the organization that is going to be paying really close attention and we're going to be listening to the music community to guide us towards the things that we need to pay more attention to cool.

00:55:37
Speaker 1: Well definitely feels like it's been better the last half of years since you've gotten there, So thank you.

00:55:41
Speaker 3: More to do, still more to do and more to accomplish.

00:55:44
Speaker 1: Awesome, man, can't wait to see what happens.

00:55:46
Speaker 2: Thanks, appreciate you, man. Yeah, good to see you.

00:55:50
Speaker 1: Thanks for having meson, Junior for coming on and talking about his incredible career and it's time remaking the Grammys. Be sure to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken with the podcast to see all our connections, and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan mcmill and our engineer is Ben Holliday. Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like this show, please remember to share, rate and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond,