Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left's podcast. Like
Speaker 1: yesterday is Run the Jewels, Yes, Killing Mike and Healthy Black.
Speaker 1: To have you here, Thank you to be here, man,
Speaker 1: thank to be here. Okay, you guys met through the
Speaker 1: Cartoon Network. Jason DeMarco at the Cartoon Network is a
Speaker 1: mutual friend of both of ours, and he gave me
Speaker 1: an opportunity to put out a solo record in conjunction
Speaker 1: with their former label, William Street Record when they reactivated it.
Speaker 1: And he said, essentially, I want this to be your
Speaker 1: opportunity to do your mayor, because most wanted a record
Speaker 1: where all you gotta do is be killing Mike, say
Speaker 1: whatever you want to say as many times as you
Speaker 1: want to say it to whoever you want to say
Speaker 1: it too. And originally was supposed to be three or
Speaker 1: four different producers. I collaborated with Jamie and I spent
Speaker 1: the day in the studio together and I told Jay
Speaker 1: he has to produce the whole record I want on
Speaker 1: the thirty day campaign, aggravating the shoot out of Jamie
Speaker 1: to do the record, and Jason um when found the
Speaker 1: budget force and and it's a it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's love at first sound after that, and we've
Speaker 1: been pounding the pavement together ever since. Well, let's go
Speaker 1: a little bit slower. How did you know Jason from
Speaker 1: the cartoon network? Jason is Atlanta is a small town
Speaker 1: that masquerades is a big city. So Jason um had
Speaker 1: done something with These daya witch doctor who's who's also
Speaker 1: of the Dungeon family. I kind of knew the William
Speaker 1: Street angle, but he was doing something in particular with
Speaker 1: Grand Hustle, And it was after I had separated from
Speaker 1: Big Boy's Purple Ribbon label and I was rolling with
Speaker 1: the TIA's label, Grand Hustle in my imprint grind Time.
Speaker 1: That's why we were putting out Pledge three and the
Speaker 1: other mixtapes and street albums. And Um, Jason, we knew
Speaker 1: each other from a meeting that he had over there,
Speaker 1: and we just kept in contact. We both had a
Speaker 1: love of all muscle cars and um, we just kept
Speaker 1: talking around Atlanta stuff and just built a friendship. And
Speaker 1: the next thing you know, I got a call would
Speaker 1: you be interested in? And I accepted it. Jamie, how
Speaker 1: did you how did you hook up with Jason? I
Speaker 1: knew I knew Jay for years I had. I had
Speaker 1: founded a record label called Deaf Jokes, which I ran
Speaker 1: Definitive Jokes. It was it was Definitive Jokes after after death,
Speaker 1: Jan sent to cease and desist because they didn't see
Speaker 1: the joke. But but I I knew him because he
Speaker 1: was a fan of my music, and we had some
Speaker 1: mutual friends and we ended up um just getting to
Speaker 1: know each other. I started kind of giving him some
Speaker 1: music for interstitial stuff on on Adult Swim, and we
Speaker 1: ended up with my label doing a few um sort
Speaker 1: of free music compilations in conjunction with with Adult Swim
Speaker 1: and and and his label that he was doing. And
Speaker 1: we just built a relationship over the years. We just
Speaker 1: became friends. Um, he's just a wonderful guy. And so
Speaker 1: when he when he called me to do this the
Speaker 1: you know, to see if I would like to get
Speaker 1: the studio of Mike, Um, I knew who Mike was.
Speaker 1: I had just sort of gotten familiar with my coincidentally,
Speaker 1: like I had just become a fan of Mike's I
Speaker 1: sort of missed sort of his debut album, but I
Speaker 1: had started to become a fan of Mix from his
Speaker 1: um Pledge allegiance to the Grind series, which was a
Speaker 1: bunch of make safe that he put out um that
Speaker 1: I that I started to catch onto And so probably
Speaker 1: about around the second one, I started to like be
Speaker 1: really listening to to Mike. And it was really around
Speaker 1: the same year, honestly that I started to really be
Speaker 1: really familiar and Jay asked me if I would come
Speaker 1: and meet him, and I was in I was in
Speaker 1: the middle of sort of doing my I had just
Speaker 1: gotten a deal to do my next solo album to
Speaker 1: take me out of you know, destitution I had. My
Speaker 1: label had collapsed. Everything that I had worked for for
Speaker 1: ten years was gone. I was I had to move
Speaker 1: into a little hardman and need egg sandwiches for a year,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what what For the first time
Speaker 1: in my life, I didn't know what the hell I
Speaker 1: was gonna do and and and you know, so I said, Okay, sure,
Speaker 1: I'll come out and do you know, I can try
Speaker 1: and do a couple of songs with him. And I
Speaker 1: went out and met Mike and at the point being
Speaker 1: we were friend I was friends with Jay said Jay
Speaker 1: telling me you should you should meet this guy. That
Speaker 1: was a big deal to me, and I was like, Okay, Yes,
Speaker 1: and I also appreciated Mike and from a distance, and
Speaker 1: when and when I got there, it was just clearly
Speaker 1: magic immediately in terms of just the music and what
Speaker 1: was happening in the studio, and also I liked the guy.
Speaker 1: And and I went home and I started getting these
Speaker 1: phone calls from Jay, who was obviously getting phone calls
Speaker 1: from Mike, and then I get the phone calls from Mike,
Speaker 1: and it was always it was, you have to produce
Speaker 1: the whole record and I and I was just like, no,
Speaker 1: hell now, oh god, god, no, I'm not doing that
Speaker 1: right now. I can't. I have to. I have to
Speaker 1: look after me. I have I've been spending my up
Speaker 1: the last decade of my life investing my time and
Speaker 1: other people's stuff, and I gotta do. I have to
Speaker 1: save myself. I have to do music. And you know,
Speaker 1: and they just wore me down. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: they wore me down with the fact that it was magical.
Speaker 1: In any event, Jamie, you wanted to do your solo
Speaker 1: album and they want you to do the complete album
Speaker 1: for a killer Mike, and I said no, no, damn
Speaker 1: it no, And I just couldn't resist. I mean, like
Speaker 1: I you know, I think that it's it's just testimony
Speaker 1: to the fact that thinking that you know what is
Speaker 1: best for you is kind of a joke. Thinking that
Speaker 1: you can control the future is kind of a joke.
Speaker 1: And I sort of just I liked Mike. I just
Speaker 1: liked him and and he and he got me. He
Speaker 1: got me as a producer, were the same age. He
Speaker 1: really got the references. You know, he knew exactly what
Speaker 1: I was kind to do, and he was excited about
Speaker 1: the music, and I was just I just had a
Speaker 1: sort of a I just thought about it, and I
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, fuck it, man, this guy
Speaker 1: is great, and who am I to You know, every
Speaker 1: plan that I've made over the past ten years is
Speaker 1: completely disintegrated and completely exploded in my face. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: time that I stopped, you know, trying to like, you know,
Speaker 1: control of this situation and just said, you know what,
Speaker 1: all right, let's go, let's do it. And so you
Speaker 1: agree to produce the album, At what point do you
Speaker 1: decide you're gonna work together as the act that came later?
Speaker 1: That came, that came. But we did the records. I mean,
Speaker 1: I did my solo album that I did his album
Speaker 1: same year. We were both on each other's albums. We
Speaker 1: both guest guested on each other's records, you know, um
Speaker 1: which we loved and we thought sounding great, And then
Speaker 1: we went on tour together. Um Our records surprisingly came out.
Speaker 1: We didn't plan it, but they ended up coming out
Speaker 1: a week apart from each other. So we were like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: why don't we why don't we take this ack on
Speaker 1: the road? Why don't we want to be tour? And
Speaker 1: we did, and afterwards if we had a great time,
Speaker 1: I think both me and Mike felt like that we was.
Speaker 1: It was you know, for two guys who kind of
Speaker 1: were looking at down the barrel of obscurity, you know,
Speaker 1: and kind of wondering like, well, you know, maybe we'll
Speaker 1: just be we can just be happy just kind of
Speaker 1: you know, playing four or five people at night and
Speaker 1: and working and doing the music we want to do.
Speaker 1: And we had really like come to the same place
Speaker 1: at the same time, like not bitter, not and not
Speaker 1: giving up, but just basically being like, you know, this
Speaker 1: is good, this is what we could be happy this way.
Speaker 1: And after that happened, after we did the tour, and
Speaker 1: we had definitely grown tighter through touring and through performing
Speaker 1: together and you know already we're having a good time.
Speaker 1: I just sort of said, you know, Mike was like,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do after the tour? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna just go into the woods somewhere
Speaker 1: at some studio and take a bunch of mushrooms and
Speaker 1: make some music and maybe put something out for free
Speaker 1: to do, like a mixtape or something for free. And
Speaker 1: Mike just said outcome and and that was it. That
Speaker 1: was as much of a plan as we had. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, there was no there was no master plan.
Speaker 1: Bob Okay. So you live in New York State and
Speaker 1: Mike lives in hot Atlanta. When you say I'll come,
Speaker 1: is that does he literally say I'm gonna come to
Speaker 1: your house? That we didn't do it to my house.
Speaker 1: I found a place at uh en uugh State, New
Speaker 1: York that there was a studio in up state New York,
Speaker 1: and I had already booked the time and just to
Speaker 1: get out of the get out of my place and
Speaker 1: just go somewhere with no expectations. And he came in.
Speaker 1: He came to that studio. We spent about two weeks,
Speaker 1: me him, our tacot ak little Shalamar was now a
Speaker 1: co producer on all the records as well. UM and UM.
Speaker 1: We just hung out and drank and smoked meat and
Speaker 1: did mushrooms and joke for each other and somehow this
Speaker 1: record happened. And we don't even know how. It just
Speaker 1: was we you know, it was. It was more like
Speaker 1: I was going to do a record and he was
Speaker 1: going to have a couple of guests verses on it,
Speaker 1: and we just were having so much fun. We just
Speaker 1: kept going. By the time we had about six songs
Speaker 1: our friends and played it for Jason DeMarco and our
Speaker 1: front Taco. We were like, this is pretty good, isn't it.
Speaker 1: This is like actually this is you know, and they
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, actually you should make an album. This
Speaker 1: is about four songs away from an album. Why don't
Speaker 1: you just making an album? And we were like, yeah, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: you know that was and that was it. Okay, So
Speaker 1: what is you've made a number of albums. What is
Speaker 1: the process literally when you go in the studio, how
Speaker 1: much do you have prepared and what does each of
Speaker 1: you do in the studio? Oh no, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I I usually the way that we do it is
Speaker 1: that I kind of go in once we've agreed that
Speaker 1: we're gonna do another record, because sort of throughout this
Speaker 1: whole process, we've never been like, we're definitely doing another record.
Speaker 1: We've always asked each other, you know, I always just
Speaker 1: looked at each other, been like monitor on the record,
Speaker 1: and always just been like, Yeah, that was that was fun,
Speaker 1: Let's do it on the record. I mean that that
Speaker 1: stopped around the time after Religiuals two. We knew that
Speaker 1: we were going to keep doing records, but Reliduls two
Speaker 1: was with that question. But usually what happens is that
Speaker 1: I go in for several months and just make a
Speaker 1: bunch of music, and then we we schedule a time
Speaker 1: to get together in the studio and I play Mike
Speaker 1: all of the stuff that I think is worthy of us,
Speaker 1: sort of all the music that is worthy of us
Speaker 1: getting on and and just sort of wait to see
Speaker 1: what what what inspires us. Um. I just you know,
Speaker 1: make sure that whatever I'm playing him is not is
Speaker 1: something that I can live with. And then and then
Speaker 1: I just try and see when I see that mischievous
Speaker 1: glance in his eyes and he starts pacing around the
Speaker 1: room and sort of freestylen to himself. I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's it's happening. It's happening. But it's just that it's
Speaker 1: that process. Make the music, get up with my see
Speaker 1: what happens between us, and then based on what happens
Speaker 1: betwe you go back and tweak the music, and then
Speaker 1: we beat again and and then there's an all sort
Speaker 1: of repeating process. So Mike, do you prepare or you
Speaker 1: just come to the studio hot and ready? Um? I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know what prepared means. I just come to
Speaker 1: the studio looking to be inspired because I'm working with
Speaker 1: the dopest producer, slash Rapper and all the lands, so
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of like the preparedness is for
Speaker 1: me just I'm just always trying to outdo whatever I
Speaker 1: did the last time. So yeah, I'm always rather win
Speaker 1: another ring with them, you know. So um, I kind
Speaker 1: of you know this go around we were for we
Speaker 1: were like recording in upstate New York, and um, that
Speaker 1: can get kind of lonely when you got wife and kids.
Speaker 1: So this time I think we found a great Um,
Speaker 1: we found a great meeting and that we're recorded in
Speaker 1: Malibu at Shango Law and I got a chance to
Speaker 1: get back into l A as I needed it, just
Speaker 1: to kind of soak up some of the city and
Speaker 1: then take that inspiration back into a room. So I
Speaker 1: probably don't want to record in a rural area so
Speaker 1: much anymore. As much as I like, I like city
Speaker 1: lights and some of the excitement. But it's not it's
Speaker 1: not It's not hard to get inspired, Jamie makes I
Speaker 1: was born to rap over lpbat so that inspiration is
Speaker 1: always just a button or right, you just turn up
Speaker 1: the volume, you know. Okay, let's talk Mike. You graduate
Speaker 1: from high school? Is that at the end of your schooling? Now?
Speaker 1: I did a year at more House, and then I decided,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna take all this
Speaker 1: pride my grandma has from me getting into the greatest
Speaker 1: song black Mail College and all the land, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say, you know what, I'm gonna be an artist,
Speaker 1: and I'll never forget my family just losing their fucking minds,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So I would have graduated
Speaker 1: around the same year I got a record deal, So
Speaker 1: that's the only regret I have. I wish I would
Speaker 1: have stayed in just to make her happy. But I
Speaker 1: brought her a Grammy. She was pretty happy about that.
Speaker 1: But I graduated high school, I tend More House. I
Speaker 1: meet big boys, little brother who attends Morris Brown. His
Speaker 1: best friend is a guy named Celo Reddick, not Celo
Speaker 1: Green from the Dungeon family, but Ready whose father is
Speaker 1: a prominent lawyer in Savannah. But CeeLo Um starts one
Speaker 1: half of the Beat Bullies who produced to hit record Kryptonite.
Speaker 1: And he introduced me the Big Boy and me him
Speaker 1: and a guy named Rocky who's the guy who brought
Speaker 1: Kryptonite to Big Boy, and a guy named Frank Goplins.
Speaker 1: Today we're just a little crew and we're big boys,
Speaker 1: little brothers, little crew. And he takes notice in me
Speaker 1: and tells me, I'm gonna give you a record deal
Speaker 1: one man. I shrug my shoulders like okay, And a
Speaker 1: few years later he makes true on his word. Okay,
Speaker 1: three years after you drop out of Morehouse. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: do you do to stay alive for those three years?
Speaker 1: Because you talk about being an artist, but usually there's
Speaker 1: a word that starts before that, starving artist. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exact same thing my father told me, and I
Speaker 1: told him I was going to be an artist. Um,
Speaker 1: I know, and loved cars, so I worked fullshit, shitty
Speaker 1: jobs that I don't like in places like Advance and
Speaker 1: Auto Zone. I sell, um marijuana, pretty good marijuana, not
Speaker 1: bad marijuana. And then I stopped doing those things, and
Speaker 1: for a couple of years I teach kids how to
Speaker 1: organize because as a child, I had learned how to organize.
Speaker 1: So I kind of put down, you know, put down
Speaker 1: the regular work and stiff gig because I was never
Speaker 1: really good for jobs. I was just stealing their money
Speaker 1: whatever they were paying me an hour. I didn't work
Speaker 1: to expectations. I always told my managers I never would.
Speaker 1: I remember a got autos Zone saying you could be
Speaker 1: a manager. I said, tell me how many spark plugs
Speaker 1: you need to sell this month to get your manager's bonus,
Speaker 1: and I'll make sure you make it every month. Just
Speaker 1: don't ever mention me being a manager again, you know.
Speaker 1: And I um. He stopped me years later and saying, man,
Speaker 1: you really did it. You became a rapper. I was like, ship,
Speaker 1: you thought I was bullshit, and I want to build
Speaker 1: the work of the autos Zone. So um, being an
Speaker 1: organizer and teaching kids to organize was a lot less
Speaker 1: dangerous than selling a little bit slower. What is an
Speaker 1: organizer and how do you monetize them? Well? As an organize,
Speaker 1: what you have is you have. UM. When I was
Speaker 1: fifteen years old, which was like thirty years ago, UM,
Speaker 1: we were a group of kids in Atlanta, and some
Speaker 1: of the kids were doctors and lawyers kids. Some of
Speaker 1: the kids were just regular working steps kids, and some
Speaker 1: of the kids were gang members, members of the gangs
Speaker 1: of Disciples and particulars, and and and the crypts, and
Speaker 1: kids were just getting counter funcked with by the transit
Speaker 1: police and the kids who were members of street fraternities
Speaker 1: or what people call gangs. That started kind of pushing back.
Speaker 1: So we arranged some meetings to meet with one another
Speaker 1: to settle some disputes, and then to meet with the
Speaker 1: police and settle some disputes. And that was the beginning
Speaker 1: of an organizing career because we organized ourselves to sit
Speaker 1: across the table from the transit authority and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you can't treat us this way, and here's why. Shortly
Speaker 1: after that, we decided that a larger group of kids
Speaker 1: should be able to talk. And at the time and
Speaker 1: Drew young UM Ambassador Young just off the phone, was
Speaker 1: actually on another interview. He was the mayor of Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and we sat them down and said, hey, we want
Speaker 1: you to give us the money so we can take
Speaker 1: um collection of what kids have to say throughout Atlanta
Speaker 1: in Fulton County and the only condition is adults going
Speaker 1: to be able to come. But you guys can't say anything.
Speaker 1: You just have to listen. That started an organization called
Speaker 1: Kids for a Change. That organization, along with an organization
Speaker 1: I belonged to called Black Team to Advancements, which is
Speaker 1: all boys. Organization, helped to broker not only a peace
Speaker 1: treaty between the Martyr Coops at that time and kids.
Speaker 1: They helped to bring out the voice of over. I
Speaker 1: think we did over a few thousand kids in Fulton
Speaker 1: County and give recommendations to the county for how to
Speaker 1: improve things such as education, um get you know, how
Speaker 1: to deal with what was the education? It was police
Speaker 1: harassment and endangement, and it was something else that we
Speaker 1: pointed out. We gave those recommendations to the county and
Speaker 1: then after it was over, we shrugged our shoulders and said,
Speaker 1: there it must be more stuff to organize around. So
Speaker 1: we would pick other things, and those things could be
Speaker 1: something that simple is helping out a homeless shelters or
Speaker 1: things more complex in terms of putting different syllabus is
Speaker 1: in school to represent things that were not exactly why
Speaker 1: the angles accident Protestants. Um, I did that for a
Speaker 1: number of years, and then I came back and I
Speaker 1: taught other kids how to do it. Okay, where did
Speaker 1: this entrepreneurial spirit had come from for me selling marijuana?
Speaker 1: I mean, your father was a policeman, and did your
Speaker 1: mother work outside the home. My mother was an artist
Speaker 1: by nature. She was a florist by nature, and to
Speaker 1: be very honest and adamant, my mother and father had
Speaker 1: me as teenagers, so they were never married and never
Speaker 1: lived a very like lifestyle. At one point, I woke
Speaker 1: up at fifteen years old, two three weeks before before
Speaker 1: I was before my birthday, to see that a woman
Speaker 1: was arrested and Griffin Georgia for attempted to buy sing
Speaker 1: key laws um cocagne. That was my mother. My mother
Speaker 1: at one point could have been classified as a queen
Speaker 1: pan Her and her friends, which were considered my aunt's,
Speaker 1: all dated very successful drug dealers and they all lived
Speaker 1: a lifestyle that was in conjunction with that. So my
Speaker 1: mom um, I learned entrepreneurship from her and my grandparents.
Speaker 1: You know my mom, you know, my grandpa soul liquor,
Speaker 1: my uncle's you know, did things of that nature. So
Speaker 1: what I did know is I wasn't much good for working.
Speaker 1: So my dad even said, he said, I remember sending
Speaker 1: you out to the yard to reg leves as a
Speaker 1: kid and just looking out the window like my kids
Speaker 1: never gonna works. I knew. I knew I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to work. But what I did do very young was
Speaker 1: my mom gave me twenty bucks to kurt her grass.
Speaker 1: I took our lawnmowre, paid the kids next to me,
Speaker 1: next door to me ten bucks to cut the grass,
Speaker 1: and he did it so well. I marched us around
Speaker 1: the neighborhood and got five more yards to cut. I
Speaker 1: took ten off every yard, gave him the other ten
Speaker 1: and realized, as mom, as I had the lawnmore negotiation skills,
Speaker 1: that was a lot easier than pushing the lawnmore. So,
Speaker 1: I've probably been an entrepreneur, you know, since I was
Speaker 1: ten or eleven years old. Okay, and you say your
Speaker 1: parents never lived together. Do you have half siblings? I
Speaker 1: don't have any half siblings. All my siblings are my
Speaker 1: whole siblings. I have five sisters to my mother Boar
Speaker 1: Loving and Lashonda, and three my mom to or what
Speaker 1: people would call a stepmother board, and that's Sharika, Candide
Speaker 1: and Monique. And my family were blended from top to bottom.
Speaker 1: We don't use the term step or half. Those are
Speaker 1: just your sisters. Okay, where are you in the hierarchy?
Speaker 1: I'm the oldest and only boy, and usually well those
Speaker 1: two things combined. Usually the oldest has all the hopes
Speaker 1: and dreams of the family imbued in them, and in
Speaker 1: addition being a boy, it's like a double thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been told my entire life. You know, don't be
Speaker 1: a failure because you're an example for the five people
Speaker 1: under you. And your other job is to take care
Speaker 1: of your sisters. And that doesn't mean my sisters aren't
Speaker 1: independent and dynamic women, because they are. But I have
Speaker 1: a particular interest in making sure my sisters okay, and
Speaker 1: in tire my sisters do the same for me. You know,
Speaker 1: if my sisters see I've had a problematic day publicly,
Speaker 1: they're the first people to call me privately and encourage
Speaker 1: me if there are things that I'm not aware of
Speaker 1: in regards to my children, because I'm traveling a touring.
Speaker 1: My sisters are the greatest aunties and that are there.
Speaker 1: So I'm very lucky that my grandparents raised me and
Speaker 1: my sisters to be very independent and to take care
Speaker 1: of one another. And do you financially support any of
Speaker 1: these members of your family? Know? What I do is
Speaker 1: I provide economic opportunity. So I've hired and fired my
Speaker 1: own son, I've hired and fired my own nephew. My
Speaker 1: niece is dynamic, so she has been hired and been
Speaker 1: kept and it's probably going to be running what we
Speaker 1: call a store. My wife and I own barbershops, to
Speaker 1: be calling stores because we participate in retail out of them.
Speaker 1: But my family, I've told all the boys in my family,
Speaker 1: should you choose to be a barber, um, I'll put
Speaker 1: you through trade school for free and you can come
Speaker 1: work for me. So I've given him the same opportunities
Speaker 1: that my uncle, who was an entrepreneur, gave me. My
Speaker 1: uncle who was a legitimate entrepreneur. My uncle's who were
Speaker 1: illegal entrepreneurs, they didn't give me that opportunity. I had
Speaker 1: to go things on my own. But um, yeah, my
Speaker 1: wife and I married a woman. My my wife is
Speaker 1: from housing projects. When y'am across village in Savannah, Georgia,
Speaker 1: and her grandmother ran ran a shot house. Her grandmother
Speaker 1: was very enterprising. So I married a woman who who
Speaker 1: thought and taught in numbers. And she's very intelligent. So
Speaker 1: I was smart enough to marry smart and Um, through
Speaker 1: through all of my ignorance and kind of terms of
Speaker 1: finance and stuff, she's been a guy in wasn't term
Speaker 1: to protecting my ass my assets literally and figured. Okay, Jamie,
Speaker 1: you graduate from high school. What does your life look like?
Speaker 1: I did not graduate from high school. Okay, well let's
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning. Your parents, your mother and father.
Speaker 1: What were their lives looking like? My father and mother
Speaker 1: UM split up when I was six. My father left
Speaker 1: the state. UM, Me and my mother and my two sisters,
Speaker 1: one of which was the child of my mother and
Speaker 1: my father, the other which was the child of my
Speaker 1: father who he left with us. UM who was my
Speaker 1: sister as far as I was concerned, But she she wasn't.
Speaker 1: She is UM my half sister, you know by blood
Speaker 1: we moved to Brooklyn. Um and um, you know, saying,
Speaker 1: well mom, household, three kids. Um, sort of moved around.
Speaker 1: Some good years, some bad years. You know. My mother
Speaker 1: was a writer. Um, she worked in advertising. Um and
Speaker 1: uh I got yeah, I ended up getting kicked out
Speaker 1: of high school. Um and you got kicked out of
Speaker 1: high school? Why you know this day, I don't really know,
Speaker 1: but I think it was because I was an asshole.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure. Um, well, we've all been too high school,
Speaker 1: and there are reasons to be an asshole, and we
Speaker 1: all try to contain us. But then there are some
Speaker 1: people who were just born to make trouble. Which which one?
Speaker 1: Where do you fall on that spectrum? I think that
Speaker 1: I have a little bit of both, a little bit
Speaker 1: of both. I think I was a little bit of
Speaker 1: a smartass, for sure, But um I also had a
Speaker 1: little bit of a rough you know, uh go of it,
Speaker 1: and I was angry. Um. You know, there have been
Speaker 1: some things and you know whatever in my in my
Speaker 1: childhood that probably lent themselves towards me being a little
Speaker 1: bit more of a uh fuck you kind of kid.
Speaker 1: You know, I wasn't. I thought I was smarter than
Speaker 1: everybody in the whole school. I thought I was smarter
Speaker 1: than the teachers and the staffs. Okay, okay, thirty thirty
Speaker 1: years later, were you smarter than everybody in the whole school?
Speaker 1: Absolutely not. But what I will say is that when
Speaker 1: I did get kicked out of school, and I had
Speaker 1: the choice, but my mother was very specific. She said, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: you're either going to become the type of person who
Speaker 1: can do this, can do school and I have to
Speaker 1: not being a problem, or you're going to figure out
Speaker 1: some other thing that you're going to do, because you're
Speaker 1: not going to just be some guy who just doesn't
Speaker 1: do anything. And I told her at sixteen, I said
Speaker 1: what every white mom wants to hear, which is I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be a rapper. And uh, mom, I'm going to
Speaker 1: be a rapper. And and she and you know, she
Speaker 1: knew that I was already making music. I mean, I
Speaker 1: had already been making music and trying to make demos
Speaker 1: and stuff since I was about twelve, and and so
Speaker 1: wasn't how much was shocked to her, but I'm sure
Speaker 1: it was a little bit of one. But she she
Speaker 1: what ultimately, ultimately what happened was I ended up getting
Speaker 1: my g E. D. And I went to Musical Engineering
Speaker 1: School at sixteen, which so Center for the Media Arts,
Speaker 1: which was in Manhattan, right near F I T which
Speaker 1: now no longer exists. Um and I was. I was
Speaker 1: the youngest dude in that school. I mean, how did
Speaker 1: you how did you pay for it? My mother paid
Speaker 1: for it. My mother paid for it. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a two year course essentially, um and uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was all of a sudden, I
Speaker 1: was like I was a kid trying. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to be in the studio. I just wanted to learn
Speaker 1: what it was like to be in the studio. I
Speaker 1: knew I wanted to be a producer. I knew I
Speaker 1: wanted to experience that. Um, I didn't know what else
Speaker 1: to do. But once I got there, and I was
Speaker 1: mostly surrounded by like five to thirty five year old
Speaker 1: dudes who just kind of to be engineers, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: But I was only there. I knew I was only
Speaker 1: there just to learn some of the tools of the
Speaker 1: trade and and then to go on to be a musician.
Speaker 1: But once I got there, all of a sudden, all
Speaker 1: of my disinterests, all of my um, you know, malaise
Speaker 1: and disinterest in learning, UM and all of the things
Speaker 1: that I just couldn't force myself to do. I was
Speaker 1: really bad at making myself do things I didn't want
Speaker 1: to do, and you know, school being the obvious result,
Speaker 1: and UM that changed for me completely and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I was I was obsessed and excelled and
Speaker 1: you know, UM so, you know, getting around music and
Speaker 1: getting around the thing that I knew that I wanted
Speaker 1: to do completely changed my life. By the time I
Speaker 1: was able to go to college, I had gotten such
Speaker 1: a high score on my g D that I had
Speaker 1: basically gotten a free ride to a few different colleges
Speaker 1: of New York that that I was able to um
Speaker 1: pick from. Well, not a free ride, I gotta almost
Speaker 1: free rode because there's a there's like a there's a
Speaker 1: quotation of like, you know g D students that they
Speaker 1: had to let into these schools. So I ended up
Speaker 1: going to and I was at the top. So I
Speaker 1: ended up going to Hunter College for you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of semesters and it was just for me. I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I was looking around and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I had been rejoined. I had rejoined
Speaker 1: my age group and all of these kids who were
Speaker 1: now getting in the in the college, and I'm standing
Speaker 1: there and I'm like, I don't, like, none of these
Speaker 1: people know what they want to do. I already I'm
Speaker 1: already doing what I want to do. I don't there's
Speaker 1: no way that I want to know about this. I
Speaker 1: don't want to take history right now. And uh, I
Speaker 1: got put my first record out that you know. I
Speaker 1: ended up putting my first record out at seventeen and
Speaker 1: just being like, or eighteen, I didn't made it when
Speaker 1: I was seventeen. That came out when I was a teen,
Speaker 1: right around my first year of college. So I was
Speaker 1: just like, I'm not I'm not doing this. I'm a
Speaker 1: rap star now. Okay, Deeples says, put school behind. When
Speaker 1: do you make some money? I didn't really beg buddy
Speaker 1: still until that I was living in in a loft
Speaker 1: with by with with the other guy in the first
Speaker 1: group that I had done called Company Flow, and we
Speaker 1: were working at Tower Records mail order department on Lafayette
Speaker 1: in New York. Okay, that begs the question how much
Speaker 1: did you steal? I saw everything that wasn't sucking tied
Speaker 1: down everything. Dude, you're the van for knowing that I've had, like,
Speaker 1: straight up, let me tell you a story. So here's
Speaker 1: the thing. So we worked in this fucking mail order department. Right,
Speaker 1: there's two sections of the mail order department. There's the
Speaker 1: mail order department in the front where you have to
Speaker 1: wear shitty slacks and and and and and a wedding
Speaker 1: shirt and then and you enter in the orders on
Speaker 1: because before the Internet, of course, everyone got their records
Speaker 1: from mail order and power records. Mail order was a
Speaker 1: big deal in that Areena and so my so my
Speaker 1: other partner, my my other partner in company Flow. But
Speaker 1: one of you know who became my partner in that group,
Speaker 1: he was in the front and he was wearing shitty
Speaker 1: slacks in the shirt and he had access to the computers.
Speaker 1: I was in the back with the work release program dudes,
Speaker 1: where there was absolutely no there was no you know,
Speaker 1: I just wasn't good enough to be in the front,
Speaker 1: So I was in the back. So I was actually
Speaker 1: boxing up the records. I'm personally responsible for sending out
Speaker 1: probably ten thousand Bone Thugs and Harmony CDs to to
Speaker 1: to to the Greater America. UM and we were working,
Speaker 1: we were taking our money and we would you know,
Speaker 1: pay our rent or whatever, and then we would at
Speaker 1: night we would go to the studio and we would
Speaker 1: record these songs. So around six when um we finally
Speaker 1: got a record pressed up um with eight songs on it.
Speaker 1: UM and it was because of a mistake at the
Speaker 1: record pressing plant. It cost about half as much as
Speaker 1: it was supposed to. And what we realized was if
Speaker 1: you punching this into the computer, then I do this.
Speaker 1: We can send all this ship out all across America
Speaker 1: for free. So my first group, the first one that
Speaker 1: put me on the map, that like made noise and
Speaker 1: got me into the business. We fucking we we literally
Speaker 1: did it all on the dime of power Mail Order Department.
Speaker 1: I sent out thousands of these records to DJs all
Speaker 1: over the country overnight straight up to their like it was.
Speaker 1: It was. It was an amazing scam. And um yeah,
Speaker 1: so kudas to you for understanding that anybody who worked
Speaker 1: at Tire Records, you either either you were a life
Speaker 1: long like loser forever, you know, or you were scamming
Speaker 1: the place. And you know, absolutely, let's just go forward.
Speaker 1: You said, you know, you get a dark spot before
Speaker 1: you worked with Mike, where you were essentially broke? How
Speaker 1: did that happen? So I never took any money. I
Speaker 1: never took a salary or anything for this record label
Speaker 1: that we did. You know, we did. We created this
Speaker 1: record label. This was after my company Flow experience with
Speaker 1: Raucus Records, and I was kind of I and then
Speaker 1: company Flow broke up and I was trying to figure
Speaker 1: out my next move. I had fallen out of love
Speaker 1: with the Raucus situation. I didn't think that they were
Speaker 1: making the right moves, and I kind of felt like
Speaker 1: I knew how to do it better. Of course, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't, but I thought I knew how to do
Speaker 1: it better, and I decided to start this record label.
Speaker 1: You know, ten years in, I still hadn't taken any money. Um,
Speaker 1: I hadn't taken a salary. I hadn't taken I hadn't
Speaker 1: you know, Um, I had sold my own record you know,
Speaker 1: I put my own records out on it a lot
Speaker 1: with a lot of other lecords that did well on
Speaker 1: an indie level. So and I did, and I had
Speaker 1: a career. I was doing show so I made money
Speaker 1: that way. But whenever the record label would hit a
Speaker 1: rough spot. I would take my money that I had
Speaker 1: and I would float the record label UM and this happened,
Speaker 1: and then I would get it back. You know, a
Speaker 1: couple of months, I get it back. We just need
Speaker 1: to get a you know, a hunder grand. We need
Speaker 1: a underground and that would be like all my money
Speaker 1: that I had, and I'd put it in and I
Speaker 1: hold my breath, and then the money will come back,
Speaker 1: and I'd be like, all right, cool, we lived to
Speaker 1: fight another day. And we did this a bunch of times.
Speaker 1: The last time that I did it, the money didn't
Speaker 1: come back, and and the whole thing collapsed and we
Speaker 1: we had. You know, what happened to us was what
Speaker 1: happened to a lot of indie record labels UM historically,
Speaker 1: and especially during the time in which the switch between
Speaker 1: the dropping physical and the profitability of streaming and all
Speaker 1: that was not leveled out. In other words, that we
Speaker 1: went from one year, you went from hundred a hundred
Speaker 1: thousands to the next year you you're sounding fifty thousand
Speaker 1: records label wyy. And but you did so well with
Speaker 1: a few records that you staffed up, You got bigger,
Speaker 1: you got an office. You gotta fucking Xerox machine, you know.
Speaker 1: And and you know, so we had a situation where
Speaker 1: we had a lot of overhead and we weren't we weren't.
Speaker 1: The physical had just been dropping, dropping and dropping, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, it just kind of collapsed out from under me.
Speaker 1: Um and and I was you know, when I look
Speaker 1: back on it now, I think it was probably the
Speaker 1: best thing that it could have ever happened for me personally,
Speaker 1: because I was miserable for a long time doing that.
Speaker 1: I wasn't happy doing it. I never wanted to be
Speaker 1: a record label guy. I just wanted to make music.
Speaker 1: I started a label because I thought it would be
Speaker 1: a cool way to work with people that I liked
Speaker 1: and put music out that I thought was good without
Speaker 1: having an audition it for the greater masses, you know,
Speaker 1: just say, hey, this is interesting, listen to it. But
Speaker 1: that's what happened. I just got I just lost my money.
Speaker 1: And where are you hundred k? That's a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Where'd you get a hundred k my royalties and touring?
Speaker 1: You know, I would I would just save my money
Speaker 1: and and and I you know, I had I had
Speaker 1: give or take. You know, you know that probably at
Speaker 1: the end that was probably that was all the money
Speaker 1: I had in the world. And um, but I had
Speaker 1: a good touring career, an indie touring career, but you know,
Speaker 1: and also we we did really well with my records.
Speaker 1: Um and for an indie label comparatively or overhead was
Speaker 1: really low obviously for you know, compared to like a
Speaker 1: major label or something. So when the operation was small
Speaker 1: and tight, I was making some money. And then the
Speaker 1: operation on the backs of those records that started to
Speaker 1: kind of get really big exposure and bow up, we
Speaker 1: started to get bigger. We started to add more people
Speaker 1: and more weight to the to the whole thing. And
Speaker 1: then it started to kind of be like, I'm not
Speaker 1: making I don't have a record label because I'm making records.
Speaker 1: I'm making records because I have a record label, like
Speaker 1: you know, And that wasn't what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: It was very unhappy for me, and so I you know,
Speaker 1: I got myself into a situation where I lost it all.
Speaker 1: I didn't have two fucking pennies in my pocket for
Speaker 1: a minute, and um that that that was a tough
Speaker 1: period for me. But you know, I had I had
Speaker 1: been broke before. You know, I guess you know, when
Speaker 1: you start to make a little bit of money, you
Speaker 1: can forget what it's like to not have it. Um,
Speaker 1: And for me, money was never to be. I never
Speaker 1: had the type of money that I could buy things.
Speaker 1: I had the type of money where I could pay rent.
Speaker 1: Worried about it. You know, that was cool. That was
Speaker 1: my success and so in all classed underneath. And by
Speaker 1: the time Mike met me, UM, I had gone through
Speaker 1: all that. I had been humbled, a lot of relationships
Speaker 1: and a lot of things, and a lot of just
Speaker 1: sort of self regard that I had in relation to
Speaker 1: me not failing had had hit me. I had failed.
Speaker 1: There was no there was no getting around it. It was.
Speaker 1: It was gone. And I didn't know what I was
Speaker 1: gonna do. I had a lot of I had a
Speaker 1: lot of um fear. And for the first time insecurity,
Speaker 1: I mean, from sixteen on, I knew what I was
Speaker 1: gonna do, and I didn't know one had ever told
Speaker 1: me I wasn't gonna do it. And I did it,
Speaker 1: and I went out and I made it happen. And
Speaker 1: here I was, however, many years later, and for the
Speaker 1: first time that thought it occurred to me, this, this
Speaker 1: might not work now I might be, I might be
Speaker 1: over and and and then I got the deal for
Speaker 1: for the new solo record through Fat Possum Records, which
Speaker 1: changed everything for me because I um, I had a
Speaker 1: little bit of money and I finally again and I
Speaker 1: could you know, I could get an apartment that was
Speaker 1: you know that I could live in and and and
Speaker 1: that's it might meant me. Not long after that, to
Speaker 1: be honest, I was. I was right sort of starting
Speaker 1: that process of rebuilding myself, like refocused and being like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm getting a second chance. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it right this time, and I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: it for the right reasons. And then I met Mike
Speaker 1: and everything all my all my plans changed. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: go back to Mike. So, Mike, how old you when
Speaker 1: you get married? Honestly, my wife and I have been
Speaker 1: married fourteen years this year, so it's thirty one years old. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you were estopped if you were making money when
Speaker 1: you got married, Uh, yeah, but I wasn't. So I
Speaker 1: got a major label deal first. Um was big Boy
Speaker 1: andre Um originally on Eric Quim and I Records, and
Speaker 1: I think he got like an eighties, was an advanced
Speaker 1: or whatnot? I already had two children at that point,
Speaker 1: in the third one coming, so a thirty one year old.
Speaker 1: Just just so I understand you had the children before
Speaker 1: you got married. Yeah, okay. How old were you when
Speaker 1: you had your first child? Nineteen years old? Okay? How
Speaker 1: the fund do you support? That kid? Oh? You sell
Speaker 1: the marijuana? I said, you're you established the marijuana industry
Speaker 1: that now corporations run. That's uh. You and you make
Speaker 1: good grades in school. That's okay. So the woman you're
Speaker 1: married to now your wife? How many of the kids
Speaker 1: is she the mother? We came as a package deal. Okay.
Speaker 1: She came without many and you came without many. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we cat you know, we I brought all the kids.
Speaker 1: Me and the kids came like, hey, dad loves you.
Speaker 1: Why don't you marry us? And there are five kids?
Speaker 1: You said, therefore, therefore, my wife tells people she has
Speaker 1: five children, including her husband. I get that. Let's go
Speaker 1: back to the muscle car thing. So when do you
Speaker 1: get into muscle cars? Oh? What have I not been
Speaker 1: in the muscle cars? So when I was when I
Speaker 1: was young, Um, my grandpa and grandma raised me. So
Speaker 1: my wife helped me realize I grew up rich, and
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I always thought rich meant money,
Speaker 1: but rich really means experiences an opportunity. So my grandparents, Um,
Speaker 1: they kept the rental house, they owned the RV. They
Speaker 1: did old people ship, you know what I mean. We
Speaker 1: went on vacations, we fished, we hunted, we did old
Speaker 1: Southern people stuff that I didn't realize that the rest
Speaker 1: of the world didn't do. But one of those things
Speaker 1: was my grandfather believed in me having stuff that went fast.
Speaker 1: So he bought an old gold card and motor scooter
Speaker 1: from like the white guys he worked with. He worked
Speaker 1: in the brickyard Chattahoochee brick It was one of the
Speaker 1: more famous brick yards in Georgia. And I remember him
Speaker 1: bringing an orange gold card home and taking the old
Speaker 1: motor off and putting up plowd motor on it. So
Speaker 1: a plow motor is what she used to till the ground,
Speaker 1: or when you have a garden in a garden in
Speaker 1: the backyard. But I think this one might have been
Speaker 1: like either like four or five, four or six horsepower,
Speaker 1: and he tweaked it a little and make it a
Speaker 1: little faster. So by the time we finished building that
Speaker 1: thing and I was sipping up and down the church
Speaker 1: parking lot. Next we got a Honda Spree. I remember
Speaker 1: he got me the scooter and it was one of
Speaker 1: the lights were bent. We had to bend it back.
Speaker 1: He caught me trying to get on the Expressway at
Speaker 1: twelve years old, that with that Honda's free. I remember
Speaker 1: him just I remember, like literally from to get on
Speaker 1: the express I finally get to go fifty five and
Speaker 1: him like, god, damn it, what a man. I can
Speaker 1: hear him from them, just like, oh ship. I looked
Speaker 1: across the street and it was him. He made me
Speaker 1: take it back home, and he didn't let me drive
Speaker 1: it for like a month, but he let me borrow um.
Speaker 1: And I don't even think I had a license, you know.
Speaker 1: Oh people don't give a ship you can drive, you
Speaker 1: can drive. Let me. He let me borrow. When I
Speaker 1: got my learners and his Plymouth Vlaire which wasn't very
Speaker 1: fads but it was four doors. It was a car
Speaker 1: and Kesha Wilcox and it was a bench seat. She
Speaker 1: kissed me um, and it was after that I was
Speaker 1: just like, yo, I'm into this car. Thing, and next
Speaker 1: my grandma let me drive her Regal. But all my
Speaker 1: cousins had very fast cars. They had our rocks. My
Speaker 1: mom had a Firebird, my my I have a bio
Speaker 1: and a non bio dad. My bio dad, Big Mike,
Speaker 1: he drove a muscle car. He drove a Camaro. My
Speaker 1: non bio dad drove a four Galaxy five hundred. He
Speaker 1: had a chiveil. So I grew up in and I
Speaker 1: grew up going to drag strips and seeing races. And
Speaker 1: my grandpa ran shine. So he liked um, he liked contiacts. Um,
Speaker 1: he was into like the g T O s. He
Speaker 1: was into. He taught me to the pontiact. Judge was right. Now,
Speaker 1: I got a sixty nine Firebird. My wife has a
Speaker 1: sixty eight fire Bird. Yeah. Yeah, the Firebird with the
Speaker 1: uh the hood word Ramsey ran exactly exactly, so we
Speaker 1: all you know, I got I got l S three's,
Speaker 1: I got a l S seven in mine, I got
Speaker 1: LS three and her. So I just like going fast,
Speaker 1: you know, I like going right? Okay, that but that
Speaker 1: does beg How many cars are you on right now?
Speaker 1: I think I'm about tenants twelve? Okay, do you own
Speaker 1: a Tesla. No, I never would. No, you've been in
Speaker 1: a Tesla ass right, Yeah. I like the Tesla truck.
Speaker 1: Let me see this, not I've got very specific You
Speaker 1: like to go fast, do we know? I like the
Speaker 1: smell of gaseline and and oxygen mixing too. That's the
Speaker 1: only thing about a Tesla's you don't get the You
Speaker 1: don't get the raw smell of fuel burning. You don't
Speaker 1: get the subtle nuances like but I like them. I
Speaker 1: like the Tesla truck enough to buy, But I have
Speaker 1: not been captivated enough by Tesla car that I want
Speaker 1: to own. I already put my order in for the
Speaker 1: Tesla truck. By the way, i'd like to say that. Okay, wait,
Speaker 1: let's stay with the truck. You guys got past the
Speaker 1: how it looks. Yeah, yeah, you understand that, Bob. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna miss out on my generation's DeLorean. Okay. It's
Speaker 1: the most ridiculous looking thing in the world, and I'm
Speaker 1: absolutely buying a ship. But I grew up on traum
Speaker 1: you know, things like that's like the low the low
Speaker 1: polygon shape. Yeah, that's that's taps right into my general
Speaker 1: How about you, Mike, who me the shape of the
Speaker 1: Tesla truck. The Tesla truck. What's crazy is I honestly
Speaker 1: think if you if you it, there's a car. I
Speaker 1: gotta remember that popped in my head the other day.
Speaker 1: I said, this son of a bitch elon musk It
Speaker 1: it is an eighties car of some type. It may
Speaker 1: even be the DeLorean turned backwards. So if you look
Speaker 1: at the Tesla truck, the front of it is the
Speaker 1: ass of a DeLorean. But if you turn it backwards.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm just it just looks like at any
Speaker 1: moment it's gonna turn into a Transformer. So I like
Speaker 1: it for the novelty. So but I drive with that said,
Speaker 1: my wife bought me a FOURD f to fifty super
Speaker 1: duty diesel for for my birthday. So again, man, I'm
Speaker 1: just a believer in Bernard fossil fuels, those dining staurs that.
Speaker 1: But I want to be specific. I drive a fossil
Speaker 1: fuel car myself. Yeah, but being in people's testlas, the
Speaker 1: acceleration is mind blowing crazy crazy. Yeah, no idea has
Speaker 1: a Tesla. But it's it's there's a certain there's a
Speaker 1: certain danger that you miss. Like I like the test flat,
Speaker 1: it's it pulls fast. I like the fact that you
Speaker 1: could don't have to drive it. You could get stone,
Speaker 1: gonna sleep and wake up in your home. The problem
Speaker 1: is driving my hellcat. Death is always next to me.
Speaker 1: The fact that the fact that I'm seven hundred and
Speaker 1: seven horse a hunted and I think I've gotten her
Speaker 1: up to a hundred and sixty four mile an hour
Speaker 1: on the regular street. The fact that I know this
Speaker 1: could be the moment to die, so me make sure
Speaker 1: you're listening to good music. That that danger. I'm missing
Speaker 1: a Tesla. It's kind of like driving a Vovo. It's
Speaker 1: it's just you're safe. Zack Zack dell Rocha has a
Speaker 1: Testla act and riding around in his Tetla, I don't.
Speaker 1: I rarely feel like I'm on a roller coaster. And
Speaker 1: when I'm in a car, like going from gero to
Speaker 1: sixty and however quickly that happens in a Tesla act,
Speaker 1: it's that ship feels dangerous. I have to admit I
Speaker 1: know it. I think so too. You know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And it's silent. It's just a battery, you know. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to Mike and you're talking to the
Speaker 1: LS three, the L seven, etcetera. But what do we know?
Speaker 1: The American cars are good in the street line, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the European The European cars he handled, generally speaking better.
Speaker 1: So is this a religious issue? It must be American? No.
Speaker 1: I I tell people I like American muscling, like German performance.
Speaker 1: So for my fiftieth birthday, I'm gonna I'm gonna, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get it. I'm gonna get that Porsche. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do what you're supposed to do when you're old. I
Speaker 1: get that, get to get a quarter million dollar Porsche.
Speaker 1: My wife, My wife, My wife drives. I bought her
Speaker 1: and that's five fifty that I drive like a fucking
Speaker 1: race car. Absolutely love. I wanted her to get to
Speaker 1: sixty three and as sixty five, and she was like
Speaker 1: absolutely not. Um So I'm a I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of German cars. I'm a big fan of the performance
Speaker 1: she's I remember she had a little she had to
Speaker 1: m him four or five BMW. But I drove that
Speaker 1: god damn car like a race car. In fact, she
Speaker 1: had a Honda Accord V six that I drove on
Speaker 1: an everyday basis, just because I liked the acceleration of it.
Speaker 1: So no, it's not it's not American or nothing for me.
Speaker 1: But if someone's putting two cars on the headstone or
Speaker 1: a couple of companies, it's probably definitely gonna be Chevrolet
Speaker 1: and Mercedes bench through me. Okay, let's go to Let's
Speaker 1: go to Dodge, Let's go to the hell cap. How
Speaker 1: long do the tires last? I go through about it?
Speaker 1: I spent about two a month on top of go
Speaker 1: through about a new set about every thirty forty five days,
Speaker 1: every thirty or forty five days. Yeah, if I don't
Speaker 1: buy a pair of new ties a month, I just
Speaker 1: then drive a car a lot. Okay, let's go to you, Jamie.
Speaker 1: Mike is known as be very political. Are you political
Speaker 1: or did Mike make you political? Or you're more a
Speaker 1: political I'm just not as I'm just not as out
Speaker 1: there as Mike is in terms of actually literally being
Speaker 1: in the political spectrum. But I think that if you
Speaker 1: look back at my career in my catalog, and what
Speaker 1: I've been talking about is very consistent with what I
Speaker 1: do now, which is that I absolutely have been talking
Speaker 1: about um sort of macro political perspective stuff. Um, for sure,
Speaker 1: we just have a different um tack in the way
Speaker 1: that we approach it. And I really like Mike's tack.
Speaker 1: I really it's really cool to know, to be down
Speaker 1: with some Mike. What I'll tell you. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what Mike did do for me, because when me and
Speaker 1: Mike met, we one of the things that we bonded
Speaker 1: on was that we had a very similar perspective political perspective,
Speaker 1: and that we had that we shared a few really
Speaker 1: fundamental ideas about the power structure in this world and
Speaker 1: about the abuses that that that come out of it,
Speaker 1: um and And there are a lot of differences in
Speaker 1: approach and experience in the way that we've looked at
Speaker 1: things UM and that translated in the way that we
Speaker 1: do what we do. I guess I've in records I
Speaker 1: am mostly philosophical about it, where it might tends to
Speaker 1: be very direct about it, and he gets you know, UM,
Speaker 1: but I think that we've discovered that together those perspectives
Speaker 1: work really well. Often, like you know, I'm I'm, I
Speaker 1: end up being macro and and and sort of um
Speaker 1: philosophical about the relationship between you know, people and the
Speaker 1: power structures that are and Mike gets into it UM
Speaker 1: from a sort of feed on the ground level, and
Speaker 1: it's made these it's it's kind of given us this
Speaker 1: really cool thing that neither of us had when we
Speaker 1: were making our music separately. But yes, I've been political
Speaker 1: in my perspective, but what Mike did for me in
Speaker 1: terms of literal politics in the sense that UM, well,
Speaker 1: a few things. But but it's really nice to know
Speaker 1: somebody who's who has genuinely been involved on on the
Speaker 1: technical level of politics. You know. For for for my life,
Speaker 1: it has never been about that. It's always been about
Speaker 1: my perspective. It's always been about what I read. It's
Speaker 1: always been about what I've seen, and so always been
Speaker 1: about how I felt about things. It hasn't necessarily been
Speaker 1: about UM. It hasn't been like Mike, where Mike is
Speaker 1: literally stumping for a presidential candidate. That's not where I
Speaker 1: have been and that's not where I leaned towards UM.
Speaker 1: So that's the answer to that question. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's the thing that worked with me and Mike was
Speaker 1: that we both did have long histories of writing about
Speaker 1: the dynamics of power and and that was something that
Speaker 1: we could find um uh common ground and in terms
Speaker 1: of making songs together because it's something that we both
Speaker 1: want to express and we just had our different ways
Speaker 1: of doing it. I really like the fact that I
Speaker 1: have might to balance me out, and I think that
Speaker 1: it works both ways a bit, you know. Um Yeah, Okay, Mike,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's all you wanted. I thought he wanted
Speaker 1: for me, Bob, than the answer to the question we
Speaker 1: go do with? You know, it's not like nor am
Speaker 1: I but I'm over here ordering a Tesla truck. What's
Speaker 1: the final number gonna be on that Tesla truck? They
Speaker 1: got it? The one I liked about sixty nine or
Speaker 1: probably costs about eighty. Is there a rebateing Georgia on
Speaker 1: electric cars? Yeah? That I think. I think they finally
Speaker 1: I think we finally got progressive enough to do that.
Speaker 1: I think we got u They got the best parking
Speaker 1: spots at all the fancy malls now, so there has
Speaker 1: to be some type of rebated rich people are buying
Speaker 1: them like that. Okay, Mike, let's say, as he seems
Speaker 1: to be saying, Trump does not leave office, what happens, Well,
Speaker 1: one or two things happens. Either we comply on the
Speaker 1: tyranny or we do what the founding forefathers of this
Speaker 1: country did, and we rebelled against it. It's it's not
Speaker 1: a not as hard, you know, it's not very difficult.
Speaker 1: The question is will we comply with tyranny or will
Speaker 1: we do what the principles of this nation require us
Speaker 1: to do? And that's um, you know, that's resists here
Speaker 1: and he had all costs. Well, what would that look like? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it will look like. Um. On
Speaker 1: one hand, it could look like all workers refusing to
Speaker 1: produce or go into work and halting the country. On
Speaker 1: another hand, it could mean all consumers refused to participate
Speaker 1: in anything except food consumption or medicine buying. In the
Speaker 1: worst case scenario, we could mean the dire use of
Speaker 1: our Second Amendment rights and taking up farms versus the government.
Speaker 1: That's one that I don't wish to see, but I
Speaker 1: think that we should exhaust every means and measure before that.
Speaker 1: But I do believe in protecting that right since that's
Speaker 1: kind of what got us here. Well, if we look
Speaker 1: at George Floyd six months ago, there was spontaneous combustion, Okay,
Speaker 1: there were there we since Ferguson, there was heat etcetera.
Speaker 1: And it unexpectedly happened and then it spread it really
Speaker 1: around the world. Well, it's always it's always happening. I
Speaker 1: think that as important as a as a former activist
Speaker 1: and always advocate, it's important to note that this is
Speaker 1: always happening. In when the Los Angeles riots happening, rioting
Speaker 1: happened nationwide, didn't happen everywhere, but it happened in major
Speaker 1: hot spots. There were stuff popped up in Houston, Louisiana, Atlanta.
Speaker 1: I write it personally as a high school student. Right,
Speaker 1: we went to the foot lockers, sooking, we get some
Speaker 1: mair Force ones in their Jordan's you know, we did
Speaker 1: what what you did. When you compress pain and anguish
Speaker 1: and anxiety, it does explode. So I don't, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think that, um, the sponineity we
Speaker 1: should be surprised by it, because people do a lot
Speaker 1: to kind of try to stay in line and believe
Speaker 1: that that that the that the ark of the universe
Speaker 1: bench towards justice, even when it feels like it doesn't. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, but I just and and okay, a couple
Speaker 1: of things and you can jump in here Jamie too.
Speaker 1: If you want, yes, I hear you that they were
Speaker 1: writing another place, uh writing demonstrating. They were demonstrating in
Speaker 1: Idaho trying. Let me tell you the most beautiful thing
Speaker 1: I saw, The most beautiful thing I saw because a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't understand that the Rainbow Coalition is
Speaker 1: something we've always heard Jesse Jackson talk about and it's
Speaker 1: been an abstract thing. But the Rainbow Coalition was started,
Speaker 1: was started, was started by Fred Hampton, twenty one year
Speaker 1: old christ like figure, amazing organizing educator in the Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party and the Check Illinois Chapter and um. The
Speaker 1: Rainbow Coalition brought everyone together, poor people, gay people, white people,
Speaker 1: and Native people, um Asian people. It was for all
Speaker 1: of us. The most beautiful I saw things I saw
Speaker 1: doing all these demonstrations riots were when Amish protesters showed up.
Speaker 1: When I saw the Amish show up, I literally wanted
Speaker 1: to say to the State of America, shame on you.
Speaker 1: These are probably the most enclosed, insulated people in these
Speaker 1: United States. And for them to show up on the
Speaker 1: behalf of a black man being killed by an agent
Speaker 1: of the state shows you that the propaganda that everything
Speaker 1: is okay it's bullshit. When the Amish, the fucking Amish,
Speaker 1: pop up buggies and horses and told, I imagine to
Speaker 1: say enough is enough. We as a country should know, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're sucking up. We need to reset this ship. Because
Speaker 1: they like the Amish, got big screen TVs watching, got
Speaker 1: d M, CNN every night. They got the word through
Speaker 1: a bird, you know what I mean. So I was
Speaker 1: really I would like to thank the Amish community and
Speaker 1: the Mennonite community out of Ohio, which one of my
Speaker 1: mentors is. But they have been amazing in this fight,
Speaker 1: protracted and and even in the short term, just them
Speaker 1: showing up has been an amazing thing. Okay, you're well
Speaker 1: known as a Bernie Sanders supporter. Bernie came very close in.
Speaker 1: I was a Warren person until she blew herself up
Speaker 1: on the healthcare and I was a Bernie person. I
Speaker 1: like Bernie, who I certainly voted for in the primary
Speaker 1: or whatever. Why did it not happen for Bernie? Two questions?
Speaker 1: Why did it generally not happen forgetting that the everybody
Speaker 1: coalescent dropped out and conspired with Biden, But why did
Speaker 1: the youth not come out? Well, the the youth. The
Speaker 1: youth I want to come out. They did come out,
Speaker 1: um in places that they felt heard and seen. I
Speaker 1: think that the South is I know that the South
Speaker 1: is fifty black. I wish that the Sanders campaign after
Speaker 1: would have kept representatives in South Carolina in particular, and
Speaker 1: in places like Georgia where they could have where we
Speaker 1: could flit the state. I wish that they would have
Speaker 1: worked the next three and a half four years, people
Speaker 1: like um Nina Turner, other people that were notable, like
Speaker 1: Cordell West, people that were a part of his campaign.
Speaker 1: Um my brother mar reached out in Georgia that ended up,
Speaker 1: you know, not coming back. I wish that they had
Speaker 1: had an opportunity or I wish this campaign would have
Speaker 1: understood the importance of three and three and a half
Speaker 1: years of relationship building because in the South we tend
Speaker 1: to be total line Democrats, because Democrats and the federal
Speaker 1: government have been the safe haven amidst some of the
Speaker 1: most dire racism and bigotry through legislation that you've ever seen.
Speaker 1: And it's very hard to trust the greater good, even
Speaker 1: though you know it's the greater good, when you have
Speaker 1: only been able to depend on one particular party and
Speaker 1: the federal government even more so than your local municipalities.
Speaker 1: So when that party says fall in line, your leadership
Speaker 1: tends to fall in line, and they tend to ask
Speaker 1: of you to fall in line, simply because even though
Speaker 1: you are what Bernie Sanders campaign was exactly what black
Speaker 1: people have asked for. It was exactly what the doctor
Speaker 1: King campaign of his last two years has said that
Speaker 1: we needed, including but not limited to once not being
Speaker 1: pro reparations, saying that he would be willing to sign
Speaker 1: the HR forty reparations bill to study reparations like Commers
Speaker 1: had tried to get past this nine including that that
Speaker 1: would have happened. But to be honest, it's just fear.
Speaker 1: There's fear mongering on both sides. Donald Trump is trying
Speaker 1: to win an election right now under law and order.
Speaker 1: If that's not one of the most fascist statements I've
Speaker 1: ever heard, I don't know what is law in order
Speaker 1: to think about that. Law and order over humanity, law
Speaker 1: and order over over over basic morality in this country,
Speaker 1: law and order over your rights. It is equivalent to
Speaker 1: see in the Seattle police officer ride over the head
Speaker 1: of a protester that's that's painted on a bicycle. So
Speaker 1: you know, with Sanders, I think that in the South,
Speaker 1: we could have had a better strategy or the campaign
Speaker 1: could have had a better strategy for how to get
Speaker 1: to know Mr Sanders better and how to get to
Speaker 1: know him more. I feel like they found or they
Speaker 1: made a caricature of him. The National Democratic Party, I think,
Speaker 1: and I think that there was some nefarious things that
Speaker 1: happened on the ground which I saw personally in terms
Speaker 1: of the national part of the undermining him. And I
Speaker 1: think that um and even in his absence, though locally
Speaker 1: he won. If you look at a place like Atlanta, Hartston,
Speaker 1: Georgia had a guy named Mayor Ted who was progressive
Speaker 1: enough to decriminalize marijuana before Atlanta, the Cab County or
Speaker 1: any of those other counties with black leadership and a
Speaker 1: majority black vote. Ted is now taking a six commissioned
Speaker 1: seat in the Cab County, one of the more powerful
Speaker 1: seats there. He was the only candidate in the local
Speaker 1: elections that I publicly endorsed. He won his candidacy, and
Speaker 1: we're going to see that that county, which is a
Speaker 1: soldad county, become an even more progressive County now under
Speaker 1: the leadership of Michael Thurman, the CEO there, who's a
Speaker 1: brother I like a lot, and Paple like Mayor Ted.
Speaker 1: So ultimately, I think Sanders did not lose because if
Speaker 1: you look at it around the around the country now
Speaker 1: I'm seeing more progressives get elected. But I wish I
Speaker 1: could have seen him take fellow office and be the
Speaker 1: President of the United States. Okay, let's just snap our
Speaker 1: fingers and Biden his president. That's a huge snap. But
Speaker 1: for the sake of this conversation, now, Okay, as someone
Speaker 1: who supported Sanders, if Biden's in there much better than Trump,
Speaker 1: and I will vote for Biden. But are the problems,
Speaker 1: the endemic problems of this country really going to be addressed? No, no,
Speaker 1: not unless we pushed the line. And the reason I
Speaker 1: say that is the endemic problems in this country are
Speaker 1: not going to be addressed because we've allowed lobbyists and
Speaker 1: money um to corrupt the political class for over a
Speaker 1: hundred years, and at some point we're going to have
Speaker 1: to take stock of that. There is there is there
Speaker 1: is trepidation that we move with as the people who
Speaker 1: pay our taxes, that we shouldn't move with. We should
Speaker 1: be bold in our moves. I met with the governor
Speaker 1: of Georgia UM a couple of weeks ago. Some people
Speaker 1: were encouraged by that, some people were not. Didn't matter
Speaker 1: to me much. I pay my taxes in the state
Speaker 1: of Georgia. I'm going to talk to the leader because
Speaker 1: I think that there are things that this state that
Speaker 1: used to better help my community. So no matter who
Speaker 1: becomes president, we must be prepared to push the line
Speaker 1: out of my meeting, seventy young black men out of
Speaker 1: my zip CO and women are going to be able
Speaker 1: to get a free trade school education. Out of my
Speaker 1: meeting with the governor who's Republican. That meeting, I get
Speaker 1: to talk to and help form a campaign that's gonna
Speaker 1: make your working class and poor kids get an opportunity
Speaker 1: to go to trade school because they aren't doing an
Speaker 1: effective job of talking to those And that happens out
Speaker 1: of that So and in matters of you know, what
Speaker 1: happens with Joe is like, what are we gonna push
Speaker 1: the Democrats in the Democratic Party to do if we
Speaker 1: flipped Georgia. We have more black legislators than any other
Speaker 1: state under under an old Gold Dome. But our legislation
Speaker 1: doesn't look like that. So we have to start to
Speaker 1: radically redefine how we do politics in this country. We
Speaker 1: have to bring politics back down to a very local
Speaker 1: and statewide level. We have to stop allowing big money
Speaker 1: to Trump, you know, contended the interests of the working
Speaker 1: classman and woman in this country, or we're going to
Speaker 1: give this country to the one percent for the rest
Speaker 1: of its existence. And we're gonna have to contend with
Speaker 1: the fact that we allowed that to happen on our watch,
Speaker 1: and we don't have to. You have to be more
Speaker 1: politically active than just voting. And I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: from a place on high as a celebrity that's smoking
Speaker 1: weed and going to strip clubs. I'm saying that as
Speaker 1: the five year child next to a woman from Tuskegee, Alabama,
Speaker 1: who drugged me to every political campaign from Carter to
Speaker 1: Reagan to versus Reagan to Mondale, versus Reagan to do Cacusa.
Speaker 1: But like I remember virtually every local campaign because my
Speaker 1: grandmother made sure I was there. And I'm thinking that
Speaker 1: we need a resurgence of that type of local fire.
Speaker 1: It isn't about how many less celebrities can do a
Speaker 1: drop and say come out. It's about that one lady
Speaker 1: that's making sure nine other people get to the polls.
Speaker 1: How are we gonna help her? How are we going
Speaker 1: to make sure there's a van there for them in
Speaker 1: sandwiches and they got orange use and they don't have
Speaker 1: to stand in line for six hours. Those are the
Speaker 1: things we're gonna have to do to truly hold whoever
Speaker 1: is president accountable, because if we don't, we've just given
Speaker 1: this country over to the people that pay. Okay, both
Speaker 1: of you. In today's world, the internet rules. And if
Speaker 1: you go to Spotify, which is the largest streaming service,
Speaker 1: and you' of the Spotify top fifty dominated by hip hop. Okay,
Speaker 1: and as much as African Americans adopt hip hop culture,
Speaker 1: it's astounding how many whites adopt hip hop culture. You know,
Speaker 1: I grew up in an era where you literally could
Speaker 1: see in the sixties who were the Republicans. How do
Speaker 1: you explain that these people are fans of hip hop
Speaker 1: yet they vote for Trump. Cognitive dissonance, I think is
Speaker 1: what there's other words they're looking for. You know, um,
Speaker 1: I don't understand it personally, but I think that you're
Speaker 1: just also contending with the fact that hip hop is
Speaker 1: just that good, it's just that dominant, it's just that exciting,
Speaker 1: it's just become that ubiquitous, you know. I mean, it
Speaker 1: is the last uh you know, great um art form
Speaker 1: created in music that that you can that you can
Speaker 1: point to and say, this is new, this is a force.
Speaker 1: I mean, me and Mike grew up in a time
Speaker 1: where just telling people, just telling anyone over the age
Speaker 1: of thirty that you were going to be a rapper
Speaker 1: or do or be involved in hip hop music, you
Speaker 1: had to get the pre records in lecture about how
Speaker 1: it's just a fad, kid, it's just a fad like disco.
Speaker 1: Trust me, I was there. I saw it. You know,
Speaker 1: there was in We Gone in the year you know. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I I almost think that to
Speaker 1: some degree, it's it's it's a question that is rooted
Speaker 1: a little bit in the idea that it's still a
Speaker 1: surprise that hip hop is as such a dominant force
Speaker 1: in music as it is. But you know the truth
Speaker 1: is that we also contend with that. You know, we
Speaker 1: have people kind of you know, there are people that
Speaker 1: said us like, you know, I love I love you guys,
Speaker 1: but I don't agree with any your politics and it's
Speaker 1: just like wow, you know, you know, and your already
Speaker 1: response to that is like it's like, well a, thanks
Speaker 1: for the love and be I'm willing, I'm I'm okay
Speaker 1: for you to go listen to the music a little closer,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's okay with me if you change your
Speaker 1: mind there nobody UM not a big deal. We're pretty
Speaker 1: secure in our ship. So okay, let's talk about hip
Speaker 1: hop in general. You know, when pip hip hops really
Speaker 1: started to gain uh mainstream traction, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of samples, most of them not cleared, and there were
Speaker 1: a lot of lawsuits and a lot of issue and
Speaker 1: then we went to beat creation and for the last
Speaker 1: I'm teen years, we have the eight O eight, which
Speaker 1: I remembers being innovative in the eighties. What do you
Speaker 1: two guys think about? And it's a big field, but
Speaker 1: the general state of hip hop man um as a
Speaker 1: producer who started off just doing what everyone else is
Speaker 1: else did with hip hop us is just trying and
Speaker 1: find a cool roof and wrap over because you were
Speaker 1: a kid and nothing mattered and you never had a
Speaker 1: shot of making any money off of it anyway. And
Speaker 1: it was literally just a hobby, like someone would be
Speaker 1: drawing a picture in their bedroom, um, you know, uh
Speaker 1: to to then becoming a producer and putting records out
Speaker 1: that now years later I've had to re release because
Speaker 1: they were on streaming and I had to go back
Speaker 1: and clean up some of the sample, clear stuff or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's interesting there's this intersection
Speaker 1: where spontaneity and creativity and then the reality of business,
Speaker 1: you know meat. But I think that um, you know,
Speaker 1: one thing that hip hop music and people who are
Speaker 1: involved in hip hop music has always been have always
Speaker 1: been a dept at it is um adapting um. And
Speaker 1: And you know, the point is is that is not
Speaker 1: about the point is not that all we have to sample.
Speaker 1: The point is not all we have to have money
Speaker 1: in order to afford to make music. The point is
Speaker 1: that we want to create music. Now. Hip hop sampling
Speaker 1: started because people didn't because Reagan cut the the arts
Speaker 1: funding in you know, in America, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: no one had any music classes, and people who wanted
Speaker 1: to be musicians, who were poor didn't have any access
Speaker 1: to music, and so they created music based on what
Speaker 1: was around in their living room, and the mother had
Speaker 1: a turntable, and they learned how to, you know, play
Speaker 1: with that and make that into something that they can
Speaker 1: make music with. And so it's invention and it's always
Speaker 1: going to be that um and so, you know, I
Speaker 1: think the state of hip hop personally is an amazing place,
Speaker 1: especially because of how huge it is and how many
Speaker 1: different ways there are now to approach it. Me and
Speaker 1: Mike came up at a time when everywhere every hip
Speaker 1: hop record that came out was a new advancement in
Speaker 1: the way that you could do it. Every time it
Speaker 1: came out, you ran. And this is why me and
Speaker 1: my bond we didn't grow up in the same city,
Speaker 1: but we were the same age, and we didn't grow
Speaker 1: up in the same community, but we were the same
Speaker 1: a level of obsessed with the music. And so every
Speaker 1: time a record came out, being Public Enemy came out,
Speaker 1: the BDP came out, you know, you know, all of
Speaker 1: these things. Every time you heard a new record, it
Speaker 1: was not only a new way to do hip hop music,
Speaker 1: but it was literally a new way to do music.
Speaker 1: And that's what's always been so exciting about hip hop
Speaker 1: is that it's so young, it's so fresh. It's absolutely
Speaker 1: writing its rules as it goes, and then that and
Speaker 1: those rules end up getting reflected for decades back on
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. I mean, you really consider
Speaker 1: how pop music and how pop culture has been has
Speaker 1: has been a reflection of what has been happening and
Speaker 1: what was the one point considered the small little community
Speaker 1: of musicians. It's incredible. You can't go on the radio
Speaker 1: and listen to an R and B song without seeing
Speaker 1: the connection to hip hop music. It cannot happen anymore.
Speaker 1: I remember when R and B records started to incorporate
Speaker 1: elements of hip hop. It was exciting. Now it's almost
Speaker 1: like you're interested to hear somebody like singing R and
Speaker 1: B record if they would put it on the radio
Speaker 1: if there weren't hip hop elements in the you know, okay,
Speaker 1: but let's flip the glass to half empty. There's certainly
Speaker 1: a lot of beefs in the hip hop world and
Speaker 1: their beasts against people like Little YACHTI and I don't
Speaker 1: know what I'm trying to say is you know there
Speaker 1: are people say, oh, it's too simplistic. You know, on
Speaker 1: one extreme we have Kendrick and the other one, what
Speaker 1: do you guys view about that hip hop, the hip
Speaker 1: to the hippity hip hip. Him, you don't talk, you know,
Speaker 1: you know you're talking to two dudes who don't have
Speaker 1: that perspective. You're not, We don't have that perspective. Like
Speaker 1: the way that I look at it. Man, anything someone
Speaker 1: who's young and excited about music wants to do that's
Speaker 1: funky that people like thumbs up, you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 1: and I think that there's an old guard perspective. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people who come out of it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's something that in me and Mike's generation,
Speaker 1: it's very common for people who are our as to
Speaker 1: be pretty fucking bitner about what the company. Well, well
Speaker 1: it's coming from your city, I will say. Coming from
Speaker 1: my region, it's not as common Bunby, is that Yeah? Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: like I gotta say, in the South, sampling was important
Speaker 1: from the South for this reason. My mother when she
Speaker 1: left to marry my non bio dad, she left me
Speaker 1: with the record collection. Right, so I five six years old,
Speaker 1: you got just your mom's your mom's sucking one. She
Speaker 1: doesn't even It's more of a big sister little brother relationship.
Speaker 1: She teaches me how to put records on. I get
Speaker 1: to play the Osley Brothers, Curtis Mayfield, Willie Hutch. I'm
Speaker 1: playing these records and hip hop introduces my friends to
Speaker 1: these sounds that I now can tell my friends, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's Oza Hayes. Let me let you listen to it
Speaker 1: after school. So Sampling, I just want to tell older
Speaker 1: musicians that didn't appreciate what Sampling brought because they were
Speaker 1: being robbed. They had been robbed by their record companies.
Speaker 1: We didn't understand that even after samples had to get clear,
Speaker 1: the money didn't go to the artist. Where does serve
Speaker 1: to go? It went to the people who owned the
Speaker 1: artist publishing. That's the greatest evil of it. So you know,
Speaker 1: not only do you have now an artists, it's like
Speaker 1: this little motherfucker ripped my ship. Then it's like, not
Speaker 1: only did he do it, now that he's getting paid,
Speaker 1: the motherfucker who ripped me off originally is getting paid.
Speaker 1: But Curtis Mayfield mentored outcast and what he taught outcasts
Speaker 1: and organized, nor he mentor organized a little bit slower. Literally,
Speaker 1: how did Curtis Mayfield uh mentor outcast? Not outcast directly,
Speaker 1: but organized noise. Who are the mentors and the founders
Speaker 1: of the sound of the Dungeon family, Patrick Brown, Ray Murray,
Speaker 1: Enrico Wade. These guys were working out of Mayfield Studio.
Speaker 1: They were working with when they were working with people
Speaker 1: like pimps and people um there were ex pimps that
Speaker 1: got into music and stuff. It really was a black
Speaker 1: waitation film. But he taught them that sampling, however, was good.
Speaker 1: That you could create the same vibe, you could create
Speaker 1: the same feeling. So when you listen to players ball,
Speaker 1: you're not listening to a sample as much as you're
Speaker 1: listening to someone that captured the feeling of what the
Speaker 1: black exquotation era and what that soul in that funk was.
Speaker 1: So sampling was important. But sampling in the South is
Speaker 1: radically different from Tennessee. Houston. Tennessee is more of a
Speaker 1: Willie Hug bop that three S has. If you're listening
Speaker 1: to say Houston music, you're listening to more of a
Speaker 1: slow down, a screwed, a more soulfl version. In Atlanta
Speaker 1: and Miami, at one point we're just fast like bouti Cheq.
Speaker 1: So sampling was important because to me it helped me
Speaker 1: understand what musicians were doing what before me. The reason
Speaker 1: I know Bob changed, the reason I know colonelist month.
Speaker 1: The reason I know this is because Sampling introduced me.
Speaker 1: I got the chance to look and see where it
Speaker 1: came from and in terms of how people view younger artists. Now,
Speaker 1: my thing with hip hop is just like what you like,
Speaker 1: because the beautiful thing about hip hop is there's always
Speaker 1: been everything for everybody. You know, people talk shit about
Speaker 1: how soft hip hop has gotten. Motherfucker p m Don
Speaker 1: was jamming. That's just a break, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And even though I was one to look no, kids
Speaker 1: kept trying to front on that ship at the school
Speaker 1: dance when that ship came on and cool J I
Speaker 1: need love songs of all time. But it was Llo
Speaker 1: cool J and he was hardest. It's hardest. It was
Speaker 1: incredible exactly. So for me, yeah, I don't shoot on
Speaker 1: the little kids. It's mental interesting you mentioned y'all. Y'alllly's
Speaker 1: father went to the same high school. He's older than me,
Speaker 1: but he's a prominent photographer in Atlanta. Um. He's just
Speaker 1: a great brother. So I've known Yadi since he was
Speaker 1: miles like little beautiful, awesome child Moles And the dopest
Speaker 1: thing about him is he's true to himself, and that's
Speaker 1: why he found audience. He found audience because my kids
Speaker 1: did not grow up with the same experience as me.
Speaker 1: So n w A hits my kids, even if they
Speaker 1: like it in a totally different way than it hit me.
Speaker 1: At twil the cops kicked my fucking ass. So fuk
Speaker 1: the police meant something different than when my my daughter,
Speaker 1: who's you know? Here's it now? It's a radically different
Speaker 1: reasons he writes it, But she understands the concept because
Speaker 1: of what she sees on television. Daddy understood the concept
Speaker 1: because the cops kicks Daddy's ass. I think that. I
Speaker 1: think that also when you get when when you find
Speaker 1: yourself getting a little bit older and you get that
Speaker 1: crossroads where you start um instinctively being a little bit
Speaker 1: bitter about whatever the new music is, you have to
Speaker 1: have a come to Jesus moment and ask yourself, Am
Speaker 1: I a music fan or a I nostalgic for the
Speaker 1: things that made me feel something at a time in
Speaker 1: which I was really feeling things? Are you still feeling things?
Speaker 1: Is it wrong that there are things out there that
Speaker 1: you're not feeling. Does that make those things inferior? Me
Speaker 1: and Mike are pretty clear about the fact that once
Speaker 1: you start thinking in that way, you're starting to get old.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that I don't think that that's
Speaker 1: the right way to look at things and listen. I
Speaker 1: would also like to point out real quickly on the
Speaker 1: production level and on the sampling issue or the sampling conversation,
Speaker 1: this was again necessity. These are musicians trying to express themselves,
Speaker 1: and there and there I have. Now we've gone pretty
Speaker 1: far through hip hop production, and what you have are
Speaker 1: and have emerged throughout it where different schools of approach,
Speaker 1: different schools of different types of sampling. I was sampling
Speaker 1: records really from the jump, but when I really started
Speaker 1: to get in my own and become known as a
Speaker 1: producer for having a sound, my approach to sampling was
Speaker 1: very different in the sense that I wasn't just looping records.
Speaker 1: I was using the sampler as my my, my, my paints.
Speaker 1: You know, Um, a sound became another sound. Um. You know.
Speaker 1: Hip hop is one of the first forms of music
Speaker 1: production in which you could turn something else into a baseline.
Speaker 1: You could turn something that was not supposed to be
Speaker 1: a guitar into a guitar. You could take recordings that
Speaker 1: were recorded in different studios and different errors by different
Speaker 1: people and smash them together and use a snare from
Speaker 1: one session and a kick from another session. It was
Speaker 1: collage art. It was mashing it all together, and it
Speaker 1: was beautiful and beyond all that. It takes real fucking
Speaker 1: creativity and real genius to turn that into something that
Speaker 1: is yours, and it has been the beginning point for
Speaker 1: a lot of producers that have ended up affecting the
Speaker 1: world of music in a huge fucking way. So you know,
Speaker 1: I always um, you know, I always understood and was
Speaker 1: aware of the perspectives on it. But it's like, look, man,
Speaker 1: I was a kid when I was stealing. Now I'm
Speaker 1: a fucking musician, you know. Now I'm a musician. Like
Speaker 1: I needed to I needed training wheels. But now with
Speaker 1: me and Mike sample, now it's on purpose. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know we're gonna do We did that with runn
Speaker 1: Jewels four. We were like, we're gonna sample. We're gonna
Speaker 1: just clearly sample, not just a little hidden things that
Speaker 1: are sprinkled about what you do and you're hiding. As
Speaker 1: part of the fun event, We're gonna loop some ship up,
Speaker 1: like as an homage to that part of what we
Speaker 1: love about hip hop music. Because it's time. It felt
Speaker 1: like there was time to references honorably and be like,
Speaker 1: we are doing this. It just so happens that me
Speaker 1: and Mike could this time afford to do it. You know.
Speaker 1: But it's an art, okay, So what's the dream for
Speaker 1: Run the Jewels? On some level, you're living the dream.
Speaker 1: You're making your art, You're making some money. But are
Speaker 1: you satisfied where you are? Do you want something in
Speaker 1: the future? What is your desire? It would be nice
Speaker 1: to do a show again, That would be fucking nice, Bob.
Speaker 1: We're all we're all laboring under those constructs. But in
Speaker 1: terms of quel let me let me put it in
Speaker 1: a different way. Okay. In the sixties in the eighties,
Speaker 1: there was a mono culture. There's an AM radio in
Speaker 1: the sixties, and there was MTV in the eighties, and
Speaker 1: if you were a successful record, literally everybody in America
Speaker 1: knew that record, whether they liked it or not, because
Speaker 1: they were exposed to it. Today today, you can take
Speaker 1: the number one record on Spotify and of Americans never
Speaker 1: even heard it, never mind how a judgment. So usually
Speaker 1: an artist, their number one goal is to reach more people. So,
Speaker 1: you know, artistically, in career wise, what are the desires
Speaker 1: of you guys personally? And I'll just say this and
Speaker 1: I'll have my answer. But that was never my goal. Um.
Speaker 1: It was always welcomed. It was always something that I
Speaker 1: wanted on some level, because that's what being an artist is.
Speaker 1: You want people to see what you do. Um. But
Speaker 1: my goal is to do what I love to do
Speaker 1: unhindered and to continue to be able to do it
Speaker 1: without without having an answer to anybody about it and um,
Speaker 1: and to continue to extract joy from it and and
Speaker 1: and you know, I love the idea of us being
Speaker 1: exposed to more people. And it has happened. It's happened
Speaker 1: for us in a big way. Um, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's amazing. The things that I love about it though,
Speaker 1: that we didn't change ourselves to get there, and by
Speaker 1: the time we finally get there, it was just us
Speaker 1: and there was we We lost our opportunity to be
Speaker 1: the assholes who have overnight successful long time ago. You know,
Speaker 1: I always I always lament that, like damn if I had,
Speaker 1: if I had gotten money, you know, and blew up
Speaker 1: when I was first starting, I you know, I could
Speaker 1: have been such an asshole. But it's a little too
Speaker 1: late for us. Man. We're we're we're just kind of
Speaker 1: who we are. And we were happy playing five person
Speaker 1: rooms because we were we were we were doing it
Speaker 1: on our turns. We loved each other, we loved the energy.
Speaker 1: It was fun and it was and we were able
Speaker 1: to sustain ourselves to keep doing it. And neither of
Speaker 1: us want to work a fucking day job, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: But in all honesty, not the fucking this is not
Speaker 1: the like the the you know, this is not the
Speaker 1: pseudo humble ship. In all honestly, all I ever wanted
Speaker 1: was to get the chance to do creative stuff on
Speaker 1: any level that I wanted to do. I think that
Speaker 1: me and might have a lot of things that we
Speaker 1: want to do together as creative partners, like a movie.
Speaker 1: We're we're working on what we're working on doing a movie.
Speaker 1: We want to get into that realm um, and you know,
Speaker 1: and but really just the ability to make music and
Speaker 1: keep doing what I love and not have to answer
Speaker 1: two assholes about it, um, not have to ask permission.
Speaker 1: And um, that's it, that's that's I'll die happy. Then
Speaker 1: I'll die happy if I could pay the rent make
Speaker 1: my weird ass music. I'm good, Mike, I'm minute for
Speaker 1: a hunt a million of better. Okay, but let's stop. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's just say tomorrow, tomorrow, will you lose your voice permanently?
Speaker 1: You got enough money to get to the end. Well,
Speaker 1: I live. I live at a means that I have
Speaker 1: the things that I've always wanted. So you're hearing me
Speaker 1: tell a joke I say about I have friends. I
Speaker 1: have three friends, now have two friends, now have three
Speaker 1: that are that are white folk rich. So in the South,
Speaker 1: you here, hey man, I'm need ro rich, you know,
Speaker 1: white folk rich. So I need grow rich, meaning I
Speaker 1: have enough to to to to to make it for
Speaker 1: the rest of my natural days, because I have invested
Speaker 1: in some enterprises that, in addition to music, provide away
Speaker 1: from me that doesn't you know, including to real estate,
Speaker 1: things that my wife did, barbershops, some other cool stuff.
Speaker 1: So and I live adam below the means that I've
Speaker 1: always thought was cool. I I could have bought a
Speaker 1: million and a half dollar house. I have a five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollar house. I could have moved to North Fulton,
Speaker 1: where the athletes who slam Dumpton run balls live. I
Speaker 1: live in South Fulton, where all the black retirees who
Speaker 1: are secretly millionaires live. You know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: it's I made the decisions my grandparents would have made,
Speaker 1: but for me. I'm not working for me at this point.
Speaker 1: I have children and my my my life has been
Speaker 1: under financial darrest because I chose to have children out
Speaker 1: of wetlock. And it does not mean in a bad way.
Speaker 1: That just means I've had to work with the knowledge
Speaker 1: of whatever I make while I'm here, it's going to
Speaker 1: be left or not left to someone, depending on the
Speaker 1: decisions I make. And I want to leave my children
Speaker 1: more than sneakers and muscle cars, just like my great
Speaker 1: grandparents who were sharecroppers and the children of people who
Speaker 1: were enslaved, left the farm that my family still profits
Speaker 1: from the day we all got a little five hundred
Speaker 1: dollar check from the timber company that grows timber on
Speaker 1: our land. I want to be able to win my
Speaker 1: absence for for for Malik and the Naya and Pony
Speaker 1: and Mikey's children, to say my grandfather. He sang, and
Speaker 1: he danced, He went in the Rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame. He left an incredible musical legacy. But more
Speaker 1: than that, he made sure that we each had a
Speaker 1: trust so that we didn't have to do things that
Speaker 1: were morally objective to out the way we were raised
Speaker 1: in order to pay for our school or for for
Speaker 1: our own children. I just want to do what my
Speaker 1: great grandparents did, and that's leaves something for them. So
Speaker 1: I am not satisfied with enough. And and I don't
Speaker 1: mean that I don't have enough because I'm not looking
Speaker 1: for a new house. I'm not trying to buy a
Speaker 1: new car, except for that test of truck you put
Speaker 1: me on. But what I but what I am going
Speaker 1: to make sure is that whichever one of my children
Speaker 1: you know, or all of them have grandchildren, that something
Speaker 1: from all this singing and dancing is going to give
Speaker 1: them an advance and stabilization, because, to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: people who look like me in this country have not
Speaker 1: had that. My wife Um really helped me realize how
Speaker 1: fortunate I am and how fortunate she is. My wife,
Speaker 1: her father is from the Gecheon Gala community. Her father
Speaker 1: is from Hilton Head Island. Her grandfather just received God
Speaker 1: Bless the Dead an award from the gechean Gala community
Speaker 1: there because he was one of the areg just landowners,
Speaker 1: had family, had commerce, and his family you can see
Speaker 1: on that side of her family is much tighter. They're
Speaker 1: much more stable, the children are more affluent and and
Speaker 1: and we're able. But she grew up in Savannah with
Speaker 1: her mother's family who was who was not as fortunate,
Speaker 1: but they had a lot of love and care. But
Speaker 1: my wife has really helped me to understand the importance
Speaker 1: of what economics means in the family. So as for me,
Speaker 1: in my half of Rue of the Jewels, I not
Speaker 1: only am having the time of my life, I have
Speaker 1: the greatest job on earth. I am always have to
Speaker 1: think with the perspective that, Michael, what you do today
Speaker 1: it's going to matter to people with your last name
Speaker 1: in fifty and sixty years, some who you may not see.
Speaker 1: So take the care of your ship and don't suck
Speaker 1: it up on drugs and strip clubs. Okay, but you
Speaker 1: mentioned the record, by the way, I'll take a hundred
Speaker 1: million to Yeah, yeah, that's we're gonna get that. My
Speaker 1: next question, how you get. How do you plan to
Speaker 1: get a hundred million? Well, you get, you get a
Speaker 1: hundred million magic, Johnson said, it takes the same amount
Speaker 1: of time to do a hundred million dollar deals a
Speaker 1: million allar deal. And we're the same group. We we
Speaker 1: We didn't go into this album like, man, we're gonna
Speaker 1: make more money. We went into this album like we're
Speaker 1: gonna top ourselves and we're gonna show our audience we
Speaker 1: can keep evolving, and um, if that works out cool
Speaker 1: and we play bigger shows, that will be cooler for
Speaker 1: us financially too. And that's what happened about proxy. We
Speaker 1: want to be the best we can possibly be, and
Speaker 1: by proxy, um in this cool system of making music,
Speaker 1: and if people enjoy it they buy ship from you,
Speaker 1: that equaled more money. But I can honestly say that, Um,
Speaker 1: the goal is always to be the best run the jewels.
Speaker 1: And what I do think we have to our advantage
Speaker 1: is we're honest and pure and our intentions. We love
Speaker 1: making music together. I honestly think we were born to
Speaker 1: make music together. And we just got a bunch of
Speaker 1: cool lass artistic people who follow us, who collaborate with us,
Speaker 1: who help us think things through, and I think that
Speaker 1: art um like Dolly, like Picasso, like henryoso our Tanner.
Speaker 1: I think that art has value to the human soul
Speaker 1: and spirit. So my hope is that we can keep
Speaker 1: creating art, both musically and visually in film and television,
Speaker 1: and that can be what we have offered to the culture,
Speaker 1: to this country, this worldwide culture of hip hop and music.
Speaker 1: And I hope that that value. Like bands I've loved,
Speaker 1: including led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and Grateful Dead, n W,
Speaker 1: A Public Enemy, ice Cube, I hope that our value
Speaker 1: holds over the long term because of what we bring in,
Speaker 1: the inspiration we bring through. Dami, you're gonna say something, No,
Speaker 1: I mean everything he's saying is exactly how I feel.
Speaker 1: And you know for me, you know, I've always only
Speaker 1: been happy when I've been allowed to create. Okay, But
Speaker 1: let's say you're in you're in the studio, Okay. Do
Speaker 1: you consciously say I want to create a hit. Let
Speaker 1: me define this. Doesn't that, that doesn't mean it's that
Speaker 1: does not mean it's number one on the chart. Do
Speaker 1: you want to create something so good that it spreads
Speaker 1: because people can't get enough? Is that in your brain?
Speaker 1: It'll feel it. Yea, yes, but it's a different context.
Speaker 1: We want to create something. We want to create something
Speaker 1: that we know motherfucker's who feel like us are gonna
Speaker 1: have to smile and nod their head to no matter what,
Speaker 1: no matter if they've ever heard us and not. We
Speaker 1: know that there's something magical about the music that we
Speaker 1: love that if you get it right, it will put
Speaker 1: a fucking smile on somebody's face. And we do want
Speaker 1: to do that, or it will put a or put
Speaker 1: a thought into somebody's head. Yes, we want to make
Speaker 1: the most banging, undeniable music possible, But the hit word
Speaker 1: never comes into it. They hit own. It's only because A,
Speaker 1: we're too fu smart to know. We're too fu smart, Bob.
Speaker 1: We know we're not making hit. That's not that's not
Speaker 1: what Run the Jewels does. A hit for us, it's
Speaker 1: something that gets played on the radio. That's rare for us.
Speaker 1: We have we have some songs that are now getting
Speaker 1: played on the radio. But you know, for us, we
Speaker 1: want to make uh something that's undeniable and something that
Speaker 1: we can walk out of the studio and be like
Speaker 1: fuck you, fuck you. This is you know, like if
Speaker 1: you don't like it, fine, but we put everything we
Speaker 1: had into it. And you know now, but we don't
Speaker 1: think that. We don't think in terms of hit. We
Speaker 1: know who we are, what we're doing, and what I've
Speaker 1: been doing all my life, hopefully, and what I bring
Speaker 1: to the group, hopefully is engaging in the age old
Speaker 1: craft of making albums and trying to make real records
Speaker 1: that tying into each other and make real moments on
Speaker 1: records that are not looked at at sectioned off into
Speaker 1: little singles and they're not thought about in any terms
Speaker 1: that are economic, but that the first track in the
Speaker 1: last track relate to each other, and there's a point
Speaker 1: to it. And we want to make art. Me and Mike,
Speaker 1: we're both visual artists, were both you know, when we
Speaker 1: were kids. I wasn't probably as good as my we
Speaker 1: we we We were both avid comic book readers. We
Speaker 1: were both art fans. We're both movie heads. We were
Speaker 1: obsessed with art our whole lives. I just happened to
Speaker 1: be from the generation of people that still really wants
Speaker 1: to make a cohesive thing that starts from beginning to
Speaker 1: end and has a point and has a relationship internally
Speaker 1: to itself. I want to make this art. This art
Speaker 1: is my life. So in answering your other question again,
Speaker 1: what I would say is that all I really want
Speaker 1: is to get the chance to create things, and it
Speaker 1: is to get the chance to spread my wings. Is
Speaker 1: actually fit if I want to direct the movie someday,
Speaker 1: I want to be in a position where what I'm
Speaker 1: doing is successful enough to allow me that leeway to
Speaker 1: write and direct the movie. Um, this is what my
Speaker 1: whole life has has has only been. And that's the
Speaker 1: sixteen year old kid who didn't. I did not have
Speaker 1: any fucking plan. B I just didn't. I walked right
Speaker 1: I I out of high school. It was a failure,
Speaker 1: and it was like, this is all I'm all in,
Speaker 1: This is all this is all I have. So of
Speaker 1: course I want to you know, I'm a fucking you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a fucking man in this world. Of course I
Speaker 1: want to find actual security. But that doesn't play into
Speaker 1: us when we're in the studio, because the only thing
Speaker 1: that's ever been successful for us has us been completely
Speaker 1: ignoring all that ship and going directly with what our
Speaker 1: heart is about this music. That's it, that's the only
Speaker 1: reason why we're here. How was that of voters. Voters
Speaker 1: rally at t I S Trap Music Museum and we
Speaker 1: have a we have a business partnership around a fifty
Speaker 1: yard restaurant that we we we have a food truck
Speaker 1: run around promoter now called banc At Seafood. And I
Speaker 1: was I was talked. We were backstage before we walked
Speaker 1: out and just gave people, you know, the fire up
Speaker 1: to get out, make sure they get out and vote um.
Speaker 1: And it was like, what you're doing. I was like, yo,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm listening to my album, um, getting getting my
Speaker 1: memorization tightened up because we're gonna have to performance. And
Speaker 1: he was like, you memorize the whole album. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I say, how do I explain this? I say, so, look, Um,
Speaker 1: you make a lot of money when you do shows
Speaker 1: because you have hit records. You have records that people say, man,
Speaker 1: I was at the prom making love to this record.
Speaker 1: I say, you got records that are burning the people's
Speaker 1: memory for the rest of their lives because you got it.
Speaker 1: And he looks at me like, yeah, that's natural. And
Speaker 1: I say, well, I make a bunch of money performing
Speaker 1: because I make albums that people experience life with with
Speaker 1: that album I say, so that gives me the value
Speaker 1: of having a hit, So I probably are never gonna
Speaker 1: have you can you can have whatever you like. But
Speaker 1: I got run to jewels too. We vote just irrupted
Speaker 1: laughter because I'm like, that's how we play festivals, and
Speaker 1: that's why we tour so much, because we don't go
Speaker 1: to make the hit, because don't play yourself chasing something.
Speaker 1: Realize what type of your what your strength is. Dennis
Speaker 1: Robbins one of the greatest basketball players on earth because
Speaker 1: he knew that if I play defense to to the
Speaker 1: to the tilt better than anyone else, and I get
Speaker 1: this ball in the hand of those shooters, I'm going
Speaker 1: to play. My part of this team is gonna win championships.
Speaker 1: Jamie and I understand that we are the last vestiges
Speaker 1: in hip hop um one of the last that are
Speaker 1: is prepared to give you a full musical experience in
Speaker 1: a way that that you don't have to in hip hop.
Speaker 1: To be very frank with you, you can have hit records,
Speaker 1: you could drop them, You can do that for twenty
Speaker 1: thirty years, but there's something about completing that record. There's
Speaker 1: something about following a group that takes you through that art.
Speaker 1: It pulls you back again and again. It is the
Speaker 1: reason I love Outcast. It is the reason I love
Speaker 1: Tribe Call Quest. It is the reason I love Gang Star.
Speaker 1: It is the reason I love you g K. If
Speaker 1: you haven't listened to you g K Ryan, Dirty, Miss
Speaker 1: get Stoned as Fun Bob and you g CA's riding
Speaker 1: Dirty because all the skits were done by Smoked, who
Speaker 1: was in jail. So he's he's talking you. You're hearing
Speaker 1: a real occurrence, like so those are the things to
Speaker 1: me Scarface Records. When you will hear j Prince talk
Speaker 1: at the beginning and end of the records, it was
Speaker 1: like going to the play as a kid. You hear
Speaker 1: that order, you set the scene for you just like
Speaker 1: uh yeah, back again and for the next hour, I
Speaker 1: just didn't give a ship what was happening outside of
Speaker 1: my room. So for for us, the hit is the
Speaker 1: record at giving you that full thirty forty fifty minute
Speaker 1: experience of cohesiveness and tapestry of the goods, the bads,
Speaker 1: the wins, the losses. It's you know, it's almost cliche
Speaker 1: to say a movie on audio, but it is a
Speaker 1: theatric experience on audio, and and that's what you try
Speaker 1: to master again and again and again. And you are
Speaker 1: talking to two guys who put who put every single
Speaker 1: record out, but we also give it away for free.
Speaker 1: So if we were completely obsessed with oh yeah, with money.
Speaker 1: Actually I want to I want to get to that,
Speaker 1: but I want to stop one spot before because you're
Speaker 1: talking about movies, Mike, what did you learn about doing
Speaker 1: your Netflix show man? What I learned was it's not easy,
Speaker 1: all right, So television not easy. Anybody can't just get
Speaker 1: on TV and be a star, no matter how cares
Speaker 1: attic you are. I don't want to work for sixteen
Speaker 1: hour days anymore unless um the money is life changing,
Speaker 1: but the show of life changing. So I have no regrets.
Speaker 1: I learned that, Um did I have a talent for television,
Speaker 1: and you're more likely than not gonna see me on
Speaker 1: television a lot more if I have anything to do
Speaker 1: with it. Um. I have loved hip hop and television
Speaker 1: since I was a child. Um, And unlike working four
Speaker 1: or five hours at UPS or AutoZone, I could work
Speaker 1: sixteen or twenty hours and wouldn't flinch. I would love it,
Speaker 1: and I would hate every minute I was doing anything
Speaker 1: that was not artistic and creative by way of music
Speaker 1: or television, and I'm absolutely obsessed with doing more of it. Okay,
Speaker 1: what did you literally learn from doing the show? I
Speaker 1: learned that people are always going to well, not always.
Speaker 1: I learned that celebrity is probably the most powerful piece
Speaker 1: of propaganda, um in this country. On the last episode,
Speaker 1: there was a young woman who was just more qualified
Speaker 1: to lead than me. She had worked with the people,
Speaker 1: she had walked amongst them. She knew the issues and
Speaker 1: the concerns and the campaigns that they wanted waged, and
Speaker 1: they still voted for me at the end because the
Speaker 1: perception was it was my show. The perception was I
Speaker 1: had more money, and the perception was that I was
Speaker 1: more popular. Um. That's when, on a Marie micro level,
Speaker 1: I understood what's happening in this country now. Um. The
Speaker 1: reason that we have someone who's potentially a tiring or
Speaker 1: despot in this country is because over the last thirty years,
Speaker 1: they they crafted him. Um or he's he's been in
Speaker 1: your living room via WWF wrestling, via his own television shows.
Speaker 1: He's one of the most mentioned people in rap songs. UM.
Speaker 1: So I learned the power of celebrity and and and
Speaker 1: which makes me far more cautious was how I use
Speaker 1: it and who I stand next to um, Because celebrity
Speaker 1: can be the most powerful piece of propaganda the capitalistic society,
Speaker 1: and it could lead us all down hallways. I don't
Speaker 1: think you need to go Okay, let's go back to
Speaker 1: the records. In terms of your income file, how much
Speaker 1: comes from recordings, how much you know you know before
Speaker 1: this crazy pandemic stuff, how much comes to recording, how
Speaker 1: much comes from live, how much comes from merch or
Speaker 1: if you have another revenue stream. I would sly live first.
Speaker 1: Live has traditionally been one of the biggest sources of
Speaker 1: gonna come for us. I mean, we've toured obsessively like
Speaker 1: a rock band. When we got the chance to tour
Speaker 1: for a year and a half straight, we toured for
Speaker 1: a year and half straight, and damn there fucking broke
Speaker 1: our spirits. But we were we we knew that this
Speaker 1: was a rare opportunity that people still wanted us to
Speaker 1: tour even a year and a half after our records.
Speaker 1: We we've we've got in a reputation for our live
Speaker 1: show and then has catapulted us up into the upper
Speaker 1: Aschlans where our font size has grown from. You have
Speaker 1: to have a magnifying glass too. It's at the top,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's an amazing thing to accomplish for us. Traditionally,
Speaker 1: that's really been where we made the money. And I
Speaker 1: think that we have we have a lot of we
Speaker 1: and we and we do well with merch and we
Speaker 1: do well with licensing. We get a lot of licensing.
Speaker 1: People love our music for film and tv UM, which
Speaker 1: has been amazing for us UM. And I think that
Speaker 1: one of the one of the calculations that we made
Speaker 1: originally was when we did this, was it was sort
Speaker 1: of not a genuine calculation, but it was more of
Speaker 1: a spiritual calculation where we were like, well, let's give
Speaker 1: this ship away for free because we don't have any
Speaker 1: money behind us. Let's see if we can get the
Speaker 1: hearts in the minds of people because the music is
Speaker 1: going to react. Uh, they're going to react to the
Speaker 1: music in a positive way. We didn't know what was
Speaker 1: gonna happen. We just thought it was a gesture. We
Speaker 1: figured we want to have a relationship with people, so
Speaker 1: let's see if we don't put a wall between them
Speaker 1: and and having this music. If someone doesn't have to
Speaker 1: have a subscription to some streaming service, or if someone
Speaker 1: can't afford something that they don't know about, they're probably
Speaker 1: not going to buy it. Um. So we put it
Speaker 1: out there for free, and we assumed correctly that if
Speaker 1: people liked it, we get the chance to perform, and
Speaker 1: if people came to the show, then we can make
Speaker 1: a living and we could sell some merch And it
Speaker 1: was kind of as as as complicated as a god
Speaker 1: when we first started. We just didn't know what was
Speaker 1: gonna happen. We've been very lucky. We've we've got the
Speaker 1: chance to do a lot of business based around this
Speaker 1: and still maintain our ability to to adhere to that
Speaker 1: principle of giving people something. And our thought behind that is, look,
Speaker 1: we want your heart and your mind. We want to
Speaker 1: earn um. We want to earn this and and when
Speaker 1: we do earn it, when you do finally spend that
Speaker 1: buck with us. We wanted to be because you just
Speaker 1: decided you had to. You like these guys, you like
Speaker 1: this music, You're gonna spend this book because you got
Speaker 1: the chance to think about it. It didn't we didn't
Speaker 1: trick you into buying an album because we had one
Speaker 1: hot single, here's the fucking album. And when we first
Speaker 1: started that ship, when we would go to distribute distribution
Speaker 1: companies or labels or whatever, they looked at us like,
Speaker 1: we were fucking crazy, what are you talking about. You're
Speaker 1: not going to give the record away for free? And
Speaker 1: we said, no, actually, we are doing that, and if
Speaker 1: you'd like to, you know, get a business with us,
Speaker 1: you can do that too. But time we got around
Speaker 1: a run until three, everybody was like, so, we're giving
Speaker 1: it away for free, right, you know, you know, and
Speaker 1: we were like, yeah, we're gonna give it away for free.
Speaker 1: Minute now, give us this check, you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: so it's been a very organic approach to us. You know,
Speaker 1: it's been a leap of faith the whole time. Um.
Speaker 1: And the one thing that we knew was that if
Speaker 1: we you know, going back to the shell thing, you know,
Speaker 1: like we fucking work our asses off to de great
Speaker 1: performers and the kid pit shows, and and that is
Speaker 1: something that we take really seriously because we knew it
Speaker 1: was one of the only things that at our disposal
Speaker 1: that we could really control that levels the playing field.
Speaker 1: We we we never had a ship hunt of money
Speaker 1: behind us. We never had a ship to the promotion
Speaker 1: behind us, but you were not going to see a
Speaker 1: show like you're gonna see when you see our show.
Speaker 1: This is we are in a different category on purpose,
Speaker 1: We're in a different category of performance when it comes
Speaker 1: to you know, the ship around us. Not to say
Speaker 1: we're the best performers in the world and no one
Speaker 1: else is. Every there's amazing performers out there. We just
Speaker 1: knew that we wanted to if we got that chance
Speaker 1: to get in front of people, that we were going
Speaker 1: to give them an experience that where they knew we
Speaker 1: were taking a ship seriously, like he goes are Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson kicks though, I think for a big I think
Speaker 1: I think that that's what really pushed us over the edge. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: just staying on that same tip, Kanye has been on
Speaker 1: wild about the traditional major label business. And you know,
Speaker 1: the unfortunate thing with Kanye is he's literally ill, irrelevant.
Speaker 1: You know, he's bipolar. Anybody who's dealt with him, you
Speaker 1: know he's not the usual customer. Shall I say, is
Speaker 1: this something you see as a side show for you
Speaker 1: that you were doing your own thing, or is this
Speaker 1: something you have of you point on, just because you're
Speaker 1: ill doesn't mean you're dumb. No. I first, he's brilliant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I love me just as a son of a
Speaker 1: manic depressed My mother was brilliant. But like you say,
Speaker 1: it could be, it could be, it could be a
Speaker 1: little madness around the brilliance. But Jamie has had an
Speaker 1: answer um over the years that that makes so much sense.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's really in whatever works best for you. Now,
Speaker 1: you know it's wrong to trick artists how the masters
Speaker 1: and publishing, and think what's wrong for us not to
Speaker 1: share some some of mastering to be able to control
Speaker 1: if it's wrong the trick artists out of publishing, which
Speaker 1: we know happened in the thirties, forties, fifties, sixty, seventies, eighties.
Speaker 1: You know, we know that. But it's also you know,
Speaker 1: once educated and once you know, once people know certain deals,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, it's it's gonna be you
Speaker 1: to decide. Jamie and I could have did bigger deals
Speaker 1: than the big deal we did. We chose to remain
Speaker 1: and keep some of our autonomy, so we took less
Speaker 1: of things in order to be more of us. Because
Speaker 1: once you marriage and married, and it's hard to get
Speaker 1: out of a marriage, you know what I mean. So, UM,
Speaker 1: I respect his words, like in terms of I don't
Speaker 1: have any say on whether I'm arguing for against or
Speaker 1: what them, but I respect someone who says something and
Speaker 1: then the next day says, I'm giving Artist of Theirs back,
Speaker 1: because that's beyond saying that's doing. Everything Kanye is saying
Speaker 1: is right, It's just it's caught up in the history
Speaker 1: of everything else he's doing, like running for president, and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's doing it also, Darren lasted difference, lasts of difference,
Speaker 1: you know, like the correction Mike, he's not saying and
Speaker 1: I don't like talking about other people because it always
Speaker 1: becomes sensationalized. But what he's actually saying and people are
Speaker 1: interpreting and is like he's giving them fifty back. What
Speaker 1: he's saying is I'm giving them my steak exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna saying he's not giving my fifty that
Speaker 1: all I'm giving them what I get. Yeah, And you know, hey,
Speaker 1: great listen. You know for us, you know I think that, Um,
Speaker 1: we walk into everything with our eyes open and we're
Speaker 1: very deliberate about what we're doing, you know, business wise,
Speaker 1: and and like he said, we made our decision based
Speaker 1: on what we believe we need in terms of autonomy.
Speaker 1: For instance, um, we could have had you know, there
Speaker 1: are different deals that we could have taken, but what
Speaker 1: we wanted was to do a deal where we didn't
Speaker 1: know someone more than one record. That was very important
Speaker 1: to us. UM. That came out of a lot of
Speaker 1: experience over the years, and that came out of us
Speaker 1: understanding the importance of being able to bargain and also
Speaker 1: the importance of being able to hold the people that
Speaker 1: you're working with to some sort of standard. I think
Speaker 1: that it is a mistake for people to get into
Speaker 1: um my personal thought is that it was a mistake
Speaker 1: for us. I'm not able to say people it's a mistake.
Speaker 1: It was. It would be a mistake for us to
Speaker 1: get into some long protracted contractual thing with anybody who
Speaker 1: we don't know are going to go to bad for us.
Speaker 1: And if you do go to bad for us, you
Speaker 1: get rewarded with a relationship. And we're very you know,
Speaker 1: we're very real about that. UM. So I think that
Speaker 1: um uh. For me and Mike, we look at everything
Speaker 1: and just us everything in every mood that we make
Speaker 1: really as a part of how we see what are
Speaker 1: what we want our options to be. Um, it can
Speaker 1: be restricted because it doesn't mean that you don't It
Speaker 1: means that we're not going out there and getting you know,
Speaker 1: you know several you know, like you know, we're not
Speaker 1: going out there and getting a fifteen million dollar recording
Speaker 1: contract because we don't want you, um, we don't want
Speaker 1: to give away in the next four albums, you know. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you two guys, you make a lot of money
Speaker 1: from going on the road. There's a long history of
Speaker 1: African Americans on the road and racism and even white
Speaker 1: people who have traveled with African Americans. You're sort of
Speaker 1: a unique act. There are other multiracial acts, but in
Speaker 1: your particular case, there's only two guys. Do you guys
Speaker 1: experience racism? I'm talking about you. I know, I know, Mom,
Speaker 1: I know, Michael say general there's racing on the road
Speaker 1: and you know and Jamie are there are times you
Speaker 1: say that people people will talk to you as a
Speaker 1: poe us to talk to Mike, or they'll treat you differently. No, No,
Speaker 1: I haven't. I haven't quite noticed that But what I
Speaker 1: have noticed is that there's this there's this thing that
Speaker 1: there's this dynamic between me and Mike that that puts
Speaker 1: people in this awkward position because what a lot of
Speaker 1: people want to ask us, but they can't because they're
Speaker 1: too conflicted and constricted in themselves. And we've called people
Speaker 1: out on it and been like just to ask man
Speaker 1: just had what we do experience as this multi racial
Speaker 1: group of friends who go out on the road, is
Speaker 1: that when we talk to people, people just want to ask,
Speaker 1: how is it possible that your friends, uh, you know?
Speaker 1: And they just don't. They just want to know they
Speaker 1: they don't know because they don't have that same experience.
Speaker 1: I grew up in New York City. I grew up
Speaker 1: in a very multicultural in New York City. Um it
Speaker 1: was um and I I thought New York was it
Speaker 1: was like a micro causem of the world when I
Speaker 1: was when I was a kid, I just assume that
Speaker 1: because I grew up in New York that that I
Speaker 1: that I knew how the world worked, and I prepared
Speaker 1: me for going everywhere. And you know that I prepared
Speaker 1: me for getting everywhere. And what I realized I didn't
Speaker 1: really get to see America. Until I started touring, I
Speaker 1: didn't get you know, and I started touring in my
Speaker 1: early pointies, I didn't get to see. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that not only was what I said wrong, but it
Speaker 1: was actually in verse. And actually growing up in New
Speaker 1: York was one of the biggest handicaps you could ever
Speaker 1: fucking have when it comes to the Greater America. And
Speaker 1: I was shocked to see the And yes there had
Speaker 1: I have been in situations where people that I was
Speaker 1: with who were black, or people that I was with
Speaker 1: who were Asian, or people that UM had It's like
Speaker 1: right in front of my face. Absolutely experienced crazy, like
Speaker 1: crazy ship like you know, very obvious racism for sure.
Speaker 1: I think that me and Mike were were at what
Speaker 1: we experienced is more like a discomfort in people who
Speaker 1: you know, want to get to the bottom of this thing,
Speaker 1: like they talked to us and you know, and they're
Speaker 1: just like they want so desperately to ask the question,
Speaker 1: like I don't you know, I'm just to say I
Speaker 1: don't understand. It's like it's cool, man, we get that
Speaker 1: it's cool. You can say it just as just ask,
Speaker 1: you know, But that particular scenario that you're describing where
Speaker 1: like I'm getting treated well and Mike isn't getting treated
Speaker 1: well because to my knowledge, I don't remember that we
Speaker 1: directly encountered that very obviously, but maybe Mike can illuminate
Speaker 1: me to that you have a prospective on this life
Speaker 1: perspect I'm a black man, just you know, you see
Speaker 1: this ship everywhere, so it's like, but it's it's not.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the South, So I took my
Speaker 1: wife to the Florida Panhandle a few weeks back, and
Speaker 1: we grow through George, Alabama, and Florida, and every state
Speaker 1: had still has their version of the Confederate flag as
Speaker 1: the state flag. So it's not like something that I
Speaker 1: haven't learned to live with. But I grew up the
Speaker 1: opposite of Jamie. I grew up in a totally black environment.
Speaker 1: My side of town was black, my neighborhood was black.
Speaker 1: My schools were black. They were named for black people.
Speaker 1: The principal was black, the superintendent was black, my mayor
Speaker 1: was black. So I grew up um and it was
Speaker 1: easy for me to be friends with Jamie because all
Speaker 1: of my heroes and villains looked like me. So what
Speaker 1: Dr King said about judging people by the content of
Speaker 1: their character was something that I got to do pretty
Speaker 1: easily because again, all the good people and assholes in
Speaker 1: my life had been black people, so I understood that,
Speaker 1: like James Baldwin tried to help people understand, we can
Speaker 1: be all those things. We can be sinner as we
Speaker 1: can say so, we could be good, we could be bad.
Speaker 1: So it was a lot easier for me to get
Speaker 1: to to not engage in the all white people are
Speaker 1: are are diametrically opposed to me. You know, as I
Speaker 1: got older and understand a little nuanced, I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, some white people are just too quiet at
Speaker 1: the wrong times, and that's that's not the same thing
Speaker 1: as being evil, but you do got a bump them like, hey,
Speaker 1: you should fucking say something right now, you know. But
Speaker 1: as a band, we do not go out and experience
Speaker 1: terrible amounts of racism. We've we've we've had subtle ship
Speaker 1: happened at Hotel check Is where they are realize that
Speaker 1: our white road managers working for both of us. As
Speaker 1: they're telling me the hold we've had, you know, German
Speaker 1: police officers opened the door, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And my wife, you know, um, my wife put all
Speaker 1: the full Muslim guards so that they don't funk with
Speaker 1: her because they don't want that bad. But in terms
Speaker 1: of me, they searched to shoot out of me, like
Speaker 1: I come breaking on into the country. But we we
Speaker 1: have been lucky in that when people physically see us too,
Speaker 1: they see that there's a harmony there, even on our
Speaker 1: worst days. This is my brother's my friend. I love
Speaker 1: my friend and brother. So when we hit the streets
Speaker 1: like we're two Americans, you know, if we're out of
Speaker 1: the country, looking over each other's shoulders, making sure each
Speaker 1: other's okay, And if we're in America, I'm making sure
Speaker 1: Jamie's okay, He's making sure I'm okay. So what we represent,
Speaker 1: before one world gets told is a friendship and the
Speaker 1: possibility to have people that are friends, that are not
Speaker 1: from the same place, not culturally or ethnically the same,
Speaker 1: and yet somehow enjoy balance and the kinship. And I
Speaker 1: love the fact that our friendship just shows that, so
Speaker 1: we don't have to say it a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: forgetting color. Okay. The music world is littered with people
Speaker 1: who couldn't stand each other. All of the South, south
Speaker 1: of the Everly Brothers couldn't stand each other. Bands break
Speaker 1: up because they couldn't stand each other. You're in the reno,
Speaker 1: you're in the bus. You know, you played then X
Speaker 1: number of people, you're god. Then you're with the same
Speaker 1: asshole that you know every day. So my question is,
Speaker 1: do you really like each other? You're really friends? And
Speaker 1: do you have blow ups or you know, what's the status?
Speaker 1: Here's the answer On the end of our album. There's
Speaker 1: a skit right and and and it's a and it's
Speaker 1: a sort of it's a sort of an homage to
Speaker 1: like the eighties action TV shows to me and I
Speaker 1: grew up on like Dukes of Hazard, night Rider. You know,
Speaker 1: we got all that called Yankee and the Brave and
Speaker 1: and in the in the Skin the Narrow says they
Speaker 1: they friends exactly, these guys have a better chance of
Speaker 1: killing each other. Right, Uh, then what is it these
Speaker 1: guys brothers killing And they said, these guys have a
Speaker 1: better chance of killing each other than something something and
Speaker 1: then and then and then and then an area says, no, sir,
Speaker 1: their brothers, And um, I think that that's the truth. Look,
Speaker 1: me and Mike do have boops. Me and Mike do
Speaker 1: have issues with each other that we end up ironing out.
Speaker 1: But we have real personality conflicts, and we have conflicts
Speaker 1: that come with being in close quarters and someone. We
Speaker 1: have conflicts that come with you know, years and years
Speaker 1: of wanting something from someone and and and and trying
Speaker 1: to trying to make their personality fit what you want
Speaker 1: it to be versus what it really is. And and
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, the reason that we
Speaker 1: keep going is because we just fucked up and fell
Speaker 1: in love with each other and became a family. And
Speaker 1: and you know, you don't walk away from family and easily,
Speaker 1: you don't. You know you this, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: a different criteria. And yes, we're friends too, and and
Speaker 1: when we're at our best, we're great friends. And there
Speaker 1: are lots of times when we're not feeling each other.
Speaker 1: It's just a fact, like me and might have known
Speaker 1: each other now for enough time to get over the honeymoon.
Speaker 1: And look, man, most people don't survive past the honeymoon. Usually.
Speaker 1: Usually that's like the honeymoon is over, the group is over,
Speaker 1: and we have survived passed the honeymoon to the point
Speaker 1: where we can genuinely say that we look, I don't
Speaker 1: consider people my real friend until I can tell them
Speaker 1: genuinely to go funk themselves, like like you know, like
Speaker 1: a friend is a motherfucker. You can tell go fund
Speaker 1: yourself and you know that you're gonna be able to
Speaker 1: call tomorrow. And and it's not easy, and it's not
Speaker 1: but but we've been around long enough, man. We constantly
Speaker 1: remind each other that, you know, the truth is that
Speaker 1: we have to completely can we have to We have
Speaker 1: to constantly earn each other. That's a fact. Like it's
Speaker 1: not something you can take for granted. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: you can do any thing and it's just cool because
Speaker 1: we'll job just be there tomorrow. We we we we
Speaker 1: know that we've got to earn each other. But the
Speaker 1: fact of the matter is that we've seen things. We've
Speaker 1: seen good things go bad. We were old enough to
Speaker 1: have seen good situations go the wrong way and for
Speaker 1: people to lose out on stuff because they weren't emotionally
Speaker 1: mature enough to at least take a step back and say,
Speaker 1: let's talk about this before and this gets any further.
Speaker 1: And I think that if running Jewels had happened in
Speaker 1: an earlier time in our lives, me and I probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been on running jewels for we probably would
Speaker 1: have just, you know, done a couple of records and
Speaker 1: been out because it can get tough, and it's constantly something.
Speaker 1: It's constantly something that we talked about in the context
Speaker 1: of making sure if all us fails, if we're sucking
Speaker 1: not feeling each other, we at least do know logically
Speaker 1: that this is the same old story that we've seen
Speaker 1: happen to other people. And if we know that logically,
Speaker 1: then we can get to the end of this, which
Speaker 1: is the happy ending, and work our way backwards. And
Speaker 1: that's what we're trying and do. That's so so, Mike,
Speaker 1: you let the Jamie get the last word. You're happy
Speaker 1: with that. I love it, man. I just a couple
Speaker 1: of words of wisdom. My wife reminds me a lot um.
Speaker 1: If you check my bios, it says um Shea's husband
Speaker 1: in one half of one of the Jews. She reminds me,
Speaker 1: I'm in two marriages and marriage is not easy. Marriage
Speaker 1: is not the honeymoon period, but marriage is worth it. Um.
Speaker 1: I feel about this group, all the excitement, all the getty,
Speaker 1: nervous anxiety that I felt about rap music at twelve
Speaker 1: years old, when I was a kid that just wanted
Speaker 1: to do it. And I'm old enough now to understand
Speaker 1: when my egos getting in the way, or when apathy
Speaker 1: maybe getting in the way, or maybe I'm just fucking
Speaker 1: tired of being on a goddamn bust and there's nobody
Speaker 1: else to grind the gifts with my partner. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: old enough now to kind of stand outside of me
Speaker 1: and be like, you know, well, this is what it is.
Speaker 1: We're also both love this group enough to take Jamie
Speaker 1: and Mike the human beings away and just have talks,
Speaker 1: you know, with one another. And I'm and I'm glad
Speaker 1: because i they're you know, their groups that hate each
Speaker 1: other that's still tour and and give the fans what
Speaker 1: they want their tours. That their groups that still have
Speaker 1: genuine love for each other but refused to get on
Speaker 1: the stage, which robs the fans. And ultimately, this relationship
Speaker 1: is more than Jamie and Mike. People invested into us,
Speaker 1: The fans really invested into us. I always wanted to
Speaker 1: be as big as we are, and bigger as a
Speaker 1: rapper because I first saw rap with run DMC. I
Speaker 1: saw rapp in the arenas I didn't see rapping the club.
Speaker 1: So I want to be on the stage with Jamie
Speaker 1: when I have silver hair and black denim outfits on
Speaker 1: running around that motherfucker like a hip hop a C
Speaker 1: d C. But the only way that happens like I
Speaker 1: wanted to happen is if I'm constantly working on the
Speaker 1: relationship with my friend and brother too. So as much
Speaker 1: as we do dope music together, UM, still a big
Speaker 1: part is just talking and just um having honest conversations
Speaker 1: about us and what's going on. And you know, ship man,
Speaker 1: I went to see a therapist, fucked man with the
Speaker 1: I may lead a fucking country. Fuck this ship. I'm
Speaker 1: just calling to check on you. You know, those type
Speaker 1: of things you shouldn't lose, And sometimes you just need
Speaker 1: to drop off the grid for a month and allow
Speaker 1: each other to have vacation with wife and family. And
Speaker 1: I think that what we understand like a marriage is balanced.
Speaker 1: They're just gonna be times where we balance and counterbalancing
Speaker 1: each other. And if we focus on staying balanced, I
Speaker 1: don't think we ever get unbalanced enough to be as
Speaker 1: shaky as we were, because there's a place where even
Speaker 1: the drama of solving drama becomes something that you don't
Speaker 1: feel like going through. I know certain parts, and when
Speaker 1: you know certain parts, you just evade it by doing
Speaker 1: this because it avoids that part and we can get
Speaker 1: to growing in other parts, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And and I feel like I feel like we're we're
Speaker 1: evolving with each album and each year a friendship. So
Speaker 1: it's something that I'm still very excited about in terms
Speaker 1: of not only making music, but just evolving a kinship
Speaker 1: and a friendship with someone who is exactly the same
Speaker 1: age as me. We grew up seeing exactly the same things.
Speaker 1: And it makes this spin around, you know, this lifetime
Speaker 1: a lot less lonely because you know, my wife's a
Speaker 1: younger woman than me. She's a woman. I love being
Speaker 1: married to her. But she's never gonna understand what the
Speaker 1: funk it sounded like the first time you heard b
Speaker 1: DP or two short. You know, she's never gonna understand
Speaker 1: you know what organized what what Organized Noise did by
Speaker 1: opening up Atlanta and having someone in tight kinship with
Speaker 1: like Jamie too. To have that and share that with
Speaker 1: means a lot to me. So the relationship is always
Speaker 1: worth working on. It is and the deeper. The deeper
Speaker 1: we go, the harder the deeper the you know, you
Speaker 1: travel along the path with somebody and you know, the
Speaker 1: more and the issues become sometimes deeper, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, they get they get harder, something like you
Speaker 1: would think it gets easier, and it does to some degree.
Speaker 1: What I think happens is that it's less ship. And
Speaker 1: then when the ship does pop up, it's deep ship
Speaker 1: and it's like and and and it's shipped. That like
Speaker 1: requires attention. And it doesn't mean that we're always victorious
Speaker 1: in the sense that we can avoid the moment of
Speaker 1: blow up or avoid the moment of pain, you know.
Speaker 1: But again, at the end of the day, we've done
Speaker 1: a good job of trying our best to make sure
Speaker 1: that we don't fucus up. And you know, we already
Speaker 1: fell in love with each other. We know that when
Speaker 1: you know the ending, you know, it makes you try
Speaker 1: harder to to to justify it. It's like, all right,
Speaker 1: I know that the ending is happy, So how do
Speaker 1: we how do we get there? You know? Though I
Speaker 1: love this group alpha ever love them, but man, but
Speaker 1: I saw Italica going to therapy, I just like get
Speaker 1: like I wanted Metallica to go into therapy to be happy,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want to see it, so I promised
Speaker 1: with me and Jamie du group there, we won't put
Speaker 1: it out. Uh. It was like watching your fucking heroes
Speaker 1: talk to the principle. I'm like, why am I the
Speaker 1: only Why am I? They hold on? Why am I
Speaker 1: the only person in the world who didn't like Metallica
Speaker 1: until that? Like I literally like watching that movie, hold on,
Speaker 1: hold on, hold on. Let me just say this. Let
Speaker 1: me just say that watching that movie, I felt like
Speaker 1: watching Spinal Tap. And if you can watch Spinal Tap
Speaker 1: and not like the main characters of Spinal Tap after
Speaker 1: the movie's done, I don't understand you. Like I thought
Speaker 1: this ship was hilarious and fucking endearing. Man, I was like,
Speaker 1: it was just that four minutes, just like James Laws, like,
Speaker 1: like you're human being, you know, and knowing those guys
Speaker 1: and being close to that camp and knowing them before
Speaker 1: the movie. You know, James used to be a drinker,
Speaker 1: and once once he stopped drinking, he was totally different.
Speaker 1: You know. It used to be in his presence and
Speaker 1: it'd be kind of intense, and now he's like a
Speaker 1: you know, a puppy dog. I saw James and a
Speaker 1: hot rod and oh it was old roach style. It was.
Speaker 1: It was low to the ground, it was badass, all
Speaker 1: type of betina. And when he waved at me that
Speaker 1: and Lar's actually coming and standing side stage in our
Speaker 1: show just for me, I just tell him I love him.
Speaker 1: Thank them for making me feel badass as a kid. Man.
Speaker 1: I just watched that movie and I thought that they
Speaker 1: were just I just thought it was great. I was like, great, Well,
Speaker 1: one thing you did is keep the band together. We
Speaker 1: know you guys are gonna be together. Uh, you know, literally,
Speaker 1: we could go on for hours. I got so much
Speaker 1: more to ask, but uh, we're coming to the end
Speaker 1: of the feeling we've known on this one. So gentlemen,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for doing this. Thank you Bob, Thanks
Speaker 1: for having us. Man, it's been a pleasure. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I just want to tell you something. So
Speaker 1: I've been I get your letter and I've been watch
Speaker 1: tweted me. You once tweeted me to give me ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember, I was wondering my personality was going to
Speaker 1: be like I was wondering if you remember that I
Speaker 1: was just working with you. Man, I get your letter,
Speaker 1: and I've gotten your letter for years and years and years,
Speaker 1: and I was reading your letter every day. And when
Speaker 1: Run the Jewels to drop, I got your letter and
Speaker 1: you talked about Run the Jewels in it, and you
Speaker 1: talked about how we had done the you know, the uh,
Speaker 1: the fake um like the joke sort of like album
Speaker 1: packages or whatever. And I just want to say that
Speaker 1: that was a proud day in my life. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to know that that was that was a problem
Speaker 1: I was. I was like, damn, this is great because
Speaker 1: I didn't expect it, and I just I just read
Speaker 1: your ship every day and it was like, all right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so sorry. I fund with you on Twitter. You got
Speaker 1: only the only thing about working with me on Twitter
Speaker 1: is I can handle. People are working with me all
Speaker 1: day long. You know, every day I wake up and
Speaker 1: people are telling me God, I'm God, and people tell
Speaker 1: me I'm a ship head. You know, I could will
Speaker 1: whole Here's the story. Ten of the of of people
Speaker 1: on the planet are certifiably insane. The only problem is
Speaker 1: is you don't know what ten percent it is. It's
Speaker 1: like people who are like, oh, they seem totally reasonable,
Speaker 1: and then they like they get totally out of control.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can tell you a story after story
Speaker 1: after story, and you get to the point where you
Speaker 1: have to put a mode around yourself because you've had
Speaker 1: too many bad experiences. Either they have to be a
Speaker 1: famous person I know them or someone else knew them.
Speaker 1: Otherwise just too risky. And social media is the magnifying
Speaker 1: glass on the heat, you know, you know, intensifying the
Speaker 1: heat ray of insanity. Um, what did I feel like?
Speaker 1: I said, like, what is Bob leftarts think about? No,
Speaker 1: you gave me more direct ship without looking up. But
Speaker 1: the only reason it's important is not that ship, is
Speaker 1: that I assumed you'd be a dick on the screen
Speaker 1: and you're anything but understand like you know, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, I've been getting that my whole life. Man,
Speaker 1: So I do apologize. I don't have to apologize. People
Speaker 1: have said things they need to apologize for that was
Speaker 1: not you're expressing them being given me ship. It goes on,
Speaker 1: but as I say, completely in real life, a completely
Speaker 1: different person. It's like just you know, we could talk
Speaker 1: TV out infinitum. But I don't know. If you watch Bosch,
Speaker 1: this guyever, he's the story. He's really intense on the show.
Speaker 1: So I'm talking to him. I got you know, the
Speaker 1: guy was like a regular guy. I'm not saying he
Speaker 1: was wimpy whatever, but you can talk just like a
Speaker 1: talk to these people. It's just so funny how people
Speaker 1: are different. And then you know, then there are people
Speaker 1: who have a reputation for being assholes who are really assholes,
Speaker 1: but you don't cover that, certainly not. I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: thanks again guys for doing this. Okay, until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob Left sex