CHANCE THE RAPPER Talks Chicago, Mixtapes and Mentors

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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm pro football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  I'm pro football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta, lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 3:01Adam Friedland?

  You were with someone for 22 years?

• 3:04Speaker 04

  Who?

• 3:04Adam Friedland?

  Your ex-partner, your ex-wife? Or you knew her for 22 years?

• 3:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, we grew up in Chicago together, so I've known her for like most of my life, yeah.

• 3:10Adam Friedland?

  Are you single, gentlemen, now?

• 3:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:13Adam Friedland?

  Have you considered doing what the god did? You get like a girl that looks a little bit like the last one and then make her be naked?

• 3:24Adam Friedland?

  What?

• 3:26Adam Friedland?

  That is hilarious.

• 3:56Adam Friedland?

  Hello and welcome to the Adam Friedland Show, guys. I'm Adam Friedland. Before we get started, as always, I gotta thank our members for supporting the show. We couldn't do it without you. If you'd like to join the Friedland Family Foundation, you can do so by clicking the "Join" button on YouTube or clicking the link in the description below. You'll get early access to all of our episodes and your name in. In the credits, if you join at the second or third tiers. Also, we have a Patreon. If you prefer to support the show through Patreon, there's a link in the description below. Finally, last piece of housekeeping, we have merch, the Adam Friedland Show. Check it out. It's good. It's cool.

• 4:36Adam Friedland?

  My guest this week is Chicago artist Chance the Rapper. Now, of course, famously, the last time I welcomed a Chicago artist, it sparked a firestorm of controversy in the world of rap. Me and my guest Gee Herbo had some criticisms for journalist DJ Vlad, who responded in kind with a direct message. Some called it a shot heard round the world. Months later, tensions have remained high between Vlad and Gee Herbo, who have been trading blows on social media. In that time, I've kept myself. I've kept my head down and I've done some reflection. And I'm ready to move on from this maelstrom. In fact, I have a potential gig for DJ Vlad, if he's willing to hear me out.

• 5:17Adam Friedland?

  And what it is?

• 5:20Adam Friedland?

  So I finally decided to respond to the direct message, and he was open to further dialogue. So with that, let's give him a call.

• 5:35Adam Friedland?

  Hello? Hello, sir. It's Adam. What's up, Adam? I just wanted to parlay with you real quick. And just kind of squash this, whatever, whatever the, whatever the misunderstanding was. Do you guys ever DJ, or is it just a screed and name? Well, I had a long history of DJing before Vlad TV started. Well, I'm getting married this year, and perhaps... You can? Yeah. Oh, and she's lovely. You want me to DJ your wedding? Well, I was just, perhaps, I would want you to be part of the greatest day of my entire life. Uh, yeah, sure. I'll show up to that. Okay. Well, sir, sir, I feel, I feel like my conscience is cleared.

• 6:18Adam Friedland?

  And have a, have a great day, I guess. Oh, good. Okay. Live long and prosper. Bye. See you.

• 6:28Adam Friedland?

  He bought it.

• 6:32Adam Friedland?

  Folks, in this crazy world we live in, we don't need any more beef, we need peace. And if two sworn enemies like DJ Vlad and myself could see eye to eye, let that be a lesson to all warring peoples around the world. And so with that, please enjoy my interview with Chance the Rapper.

• 7:01Adam Friedland?

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• 7:46Adam Friedland?

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• 8:37Adam Friedland?

  Ladies and gentlemen, our next guest is a Grammy Award winning, multi-platinum, diamond certified, I believe?

• 8:44Speaker 04

  Yeah!

• 8:44Adam Friedland?

  Diamond! That's even better than platinum, guys. Diamond certified recording artist, ladies and gentlemen, Chance the Rapper, everyone.

• 8:55Adam Friedland?

  Thanks for coming! Thanks for coming, sir!

• 8:57Speaker 04

  Oh, thanks for having me, man.

• 8:59Adam Friedland?

  Thanks for coming, sir!

• 8:59Speaker 04

  I appreciate it.

• 9:01Adam Friedland?

  So, I just had-

• 9:04Speaker 04

  Should I still be standing?

• 9:04Adam Friedland?

  I just had- no, no, sit down, please. I had Herb on the show-

• 9:08Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 9:08Adam Friedland?

  And I paid tribute by giving him a bottle of 1942.

• 9:11Speaker 04

  We love 1942, I have.

• 9:13Adam Friedland?

  Have you had that before? The liquor store, I think I bought the last one, because it was like last week. So, they said, "This one's good, it's called Casa Azul."

• 9:20Speaker 04

  I'm familiar.

• 9:21Adam Friedland?

  Do you know this one?

• 9:22Speaker 04

  It's got the ding.

• 9:23Adam Friedland?

  I see it on, like, Real Housewives kinda shows.

• 9:26Speaker 04

  Vibes.

• 9:27Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, like a rich lady who's about to cheat.

• 9:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:30Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, she like, with like, the pool boy. So, we're gonna, we're gonna stress out, you have the same, you have the same publicist?

• 9:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:40Adam Friedland?

  So, you're gonna get stressed out again, you have a hard out at 5, but we're gonna be having this, what is, it's ceramic.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:48Adam Friedland?

  So, let's do it, you wanna do lechaim?

• 9:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, what we do is we bless the bottle.

• 9:52Adam Friedland?

  Start off, drink champs?

• 9:52Speaker 04

  Bless it? Yeah, you just-

• 9:53Adam Friedland?

  Oh, you do grace?

• 9:56Speaker 04

  It's sorta, yeah, sorta same thing, so you just tap the bottle.

• 9:58Adam Friedland?

  Do you want me to do the Jewish stuff?

• 9:59Speaker 04

  There you go, bow.

• 9:59Adam Friedland?

  Okay.

• 10:00Speaker 04

  That was it? That was the Jewish stuff?

• 10:01Adam Friedland?

  Bang!

• 10:01Speaker 04

  Oh!

• 10:02Adam Friedland?

  No, no, I mean the Jewish prayer on tequila.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:06Adam Friedland?

  Do you say, do you have to say grace before every meal? If you're a devout Christian? Or just like-

• 10:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 10:12Adam Friedland?

  If it's a drink, you have to say grace? Or if it's like a full-

• 10:15Speaker 04

  No, that was more like, that's like some kid-

• 10:17Adam Friedland?

  I know, this-

• 10:18Speaker 04

  -weird shit. When it's blessing the bottle, that actually has a good Jewish sanity.

• 10:21Adam Friedland?

  No, I didn't think of that as religious, but, like, if it's a snack, do you have to say grace?

• 10:28Speaker 04

  That's a good question. I think you do.

• 10:29Adam Friedland?

  You do. I think in Judaism too, for like, for different, this is the most boring conversation ever. Let's go, let's, uh, let's have a look.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  Let's explore each other's faiths.

• 10:38Adam Friedland?

  I don't have, I don't, you know, I don't faith. I don't faith. Do you, you faith? You're a God fearing gentleman?

• 10:45Speaker 04

  Amen, yeah.

• 10:46Adam Friedland?

  Amen. But we found out today, this is really blowing my mind, you were in the Jewish Student Union?

• 10:52Speaker 04

  I was in the JSU.

• 10:53Adam Friedland?

  Why?

• 10:53Speaker 04

  Cause I have like, a ton of Jewish friends that like, were really into the same shit that I was into when I was in high school. I went to like, a really like,

• 11:01Adam Friedland?

  Smoking bud.

• 11:02Speaker 04

  Smoking bud.

• 11:03Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  You know what I mean? Like, like, I was on Lit Mag. You know what Lit Mag is?

• 11:07Adam Friedland?

  You got good grades.

• 11:09Speaker 04

  I didn't get good grades, but I was into things. So I would, I'd be into something,

• 11:14Adam Friedland?

  Uh huh.

• 11:14Speaker 04

  And, and I would go into, I would just go and like, join. And Lit Mag, um, was like, all of the, the like, quirky writer folks at my school.

• 11:26Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, girls. Were there, were there like,

• 11:28Speaker 04

  There were girls.

• 11:29Adam Friedland?

  The glasses girls. Indie girls.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  I would like the Indies.

• 11:32Adam Friedland?

  The Indie girls.

• 11:33Speaker 04

  I was into the Indies.

• 11:34Adam Friedland?

  The Indie girls. Lachai, my friend.

• 11:36Speaker 04

  The 824 girls, here we go.

• 11:40Adam Friedland?

  The bisexual lighting. The purple, sorry, okay. Uh, thank you for coming on.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 11:47Adam Friedland?

  Um, yeah, it's interesting, cause we just had, uh, Herb on the show, and it's like, you're of the same generation, but I feel like you're like, the good kid side of, uh, Chicago. And they were the, they were the going outside, uh, boys.

• 12:00Speaker 04

  It would seem that way.

• 12:02Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 12:02Speaker 04

  That's not the truth. We're from the same hood. We both from 79th. I've known Herb for a really, really long time.

• 12:07Adam Friedland?

  He's a great guy.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  He's an amazing dude. And, you know, the hood, the hood is the hood, you know what I'm saying? It's really just about what you do for the hood. And Herb does for the hood. Like, he has a school, he like, works with mental health facilities, he's got like, kids that he mentors. Like, me and him are very, very similar. And like, and we talk like, like, once a week. That's my dude.

• 12:30Adam Friedland?

  Let's get to like, your upbringing, your family and stuff like that. Like, your, your father was involved in politics? Both of your parents were?

• 12:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. My mom a little bit, but my dad, yes, for sure.

• 12:39Adam Friedland?

  He worked for, he worked for?

• 12:41Speaker 04

  He worked for Obama. He worked for Harold Washington. He worked for Rahm Emanuel. He, so my dad, really, I guess I gotta start with my grandmother. My grandmother was very like politically active and, and at a young age, and she had all her kids young, like my dad and my auntie's young.

• 12:58Adam Friedland?

  In Chicago?

• 12:59Speaker 04

  In Chicago.

• 13:00Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  And so, you know, Chicago's a super politically active space. This is where Fred Hampton is, is organizing the Black Panthers, where Stokely Carmichael and, and all these people are, are gathering and having. So she was like really swept up into that stuff. And so she would volunteer her kids for certain things. And then Harold Washington, first black mayor of Chicago and like, I think the first, it might've been the first black mayor of, of a major, of a metropolitan city. And so she got them all to sign up for that. And that kinda got my dad into politics. And then I think from there, he just always stayed like, you know, it still has like this grassroots thing of like, you know, he was my block club president, like, my dad was very like, on some like activism shit, but he worked, he did also work for, uh, for Barack too. And so.

• 13:44Adam Friedland?

  That's your boy? Barry? Barry?

• 13:47Speaker 04

  That's not my boy. But, you know what I'm saying?

• 13:49Adam Friedland?

  You've met the goat?

• 13:50Speaker 04

  I met, I met the goat before, for sure.

• 13:52Adam Friedland?

  Really? What's his, what's the energy? Like, what's, what's, uh?

• 13:57Speaker 04

  He's just like he is on TV.

• 13:58Adam Friedland?

  Ri- no, he's not.

• 14:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:00Adam Friedland?

  As a guy?

• 14:01Speaker 04

  Hundred percent, yeah.

• 14:02Adam Friedland?

  He's like, let me be-

• 14:03Speaker 04

  Or maybe he's just like he is on TV.

• 14:04Adam Friedland?

  He says, let me be clear to you?

• 14:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:06Adam Friedland?

  And he does this?

• 14:07Speaker 04

  He does the-

• 14:08Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 14:08Speaker 04

  I don't got the Barack impression.

• 14:10Adam Friedland?

  What do you think he's up to these days? He's gotta be so bored.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  I don't know. I don't really talk to him. So I don't think of him as like a person, like I think of like-

• 14:20Adam Friedland?

  Listen, you're best friends with Obama.

• 14:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what people, that's what, that's what I feel like that's the, nah, I'm, I'm, I'm honored that they gave me, like, they gave me some, some shout outs in the past. I got a humanitarian award that-

• 14:32Adam Friedland?

  Did you make one of his best of lists of, for the year?

• 14:35Speaker 04

  I was on a playlist once, yeah.

• 14:36Adam Friedland?

  Your dad, that's nepotism. Your dad, your dad got you wrong.

• 14:39Speaker 04

  People know people, you know what I'm saying? Like, that was really what I got into the industry for, was like-

• 14:43Adam Friedland?

  To get, to know Obama.

• 14:45Speaker 04

  To get on the playlist, you know what I'm saying?

• 14:47Adam Friedland?

  Obama playlist of the year, yeah, yeah. What else did he have on that? March Madness?

• 14:52Speaker 04

  I think he did have-

• 14:53Adam Friedland?

  No, he didn't. No, he didn't.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  I feel like he did have-

• 14:55Adam Friedland?

  No, he didn't.

• 14:56Speaker 04

  Maybe not March Madness.

• 14:57Adam Friedland?

  No, he has like, he has like smart stuff on it.

• 14:59Speaker 04

  No, he'd be-

• 14:59Adam Friedland?

  He doesn't have dumb, he doesn't have, I'm on so many drugs.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  Like wink, wink on there, you know what I mean?

• 15:04Adam Friedland?

  He's a wink, wink? He has like, I, I cheated on you, but it's only because I'm depressed? The narrative of future as the is the best.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:13Adam Friedland?

  Because you still feel bad for him. He's like,

• 15:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's a.

• 15:15Adam Friedland?

  I'm so sad. That's why I had to get so mu- so much pussy.

• 15:21Adam Friedland?

  It's great.

• 15:23Speaker 04

  He's so much is hilarious.

• 15:24Adam Friedland?

  He's like, I just, it's because I'm so, because I feel so lonely. And you're like, you buy it too.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  Can I vape on your show? Is that a thing?

• 15:31Adam Friedland?

  I feel like this is more. You hit V?

• 15:33Speaker 04

  We're drinking.

• 15:34Adam Friedland?

  Dude, to have some more. Yeah, of course, dude. Are there a lot of rape, uh, rap- rapper? Are there a lot of rapper vapors? Right, because vape, I didn't. Are there a lot of vape rap- vapor rappers?

• 15:47Speaker 04

  Vapor rappers? Uh.

• 15:49Adam Friedland?

  You hit Juul. That's old cool stuff.

• 15:51Speaker 04

  I'm definitely, I'm like, so, I don't know. I need to be a part of the class action lawsuit because I am thoroughly addicted to these and I am like, just so I could watch this back later. You are addicted to these?

• 16:03Adam Friedland?

  It got me so into.

• 16:04Speaker 04

  I gotta quit.

• 16:04Adam Friedland?

  It made me so addicted. But now I started upper deckies.

• 16:08Speaker 04

  Here's the problem, and this is gonna, this is gonna lose us all our tobacco sponsors, but the,

• 16:12Adam Friedland?

  I don't have it.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  Issue, I'm joking. The issue is that like, think about this, because you used to smoke cigarettes, I'm guessing.

• 16:17Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, which are cool. They look sick.

• 16:19Speaker 04

  They look way cooler, um, faster, uh, death. The thing is like with cigarettes.

• 16:24Adam Friedland?

  It's fine.

• 16:25Speaker 04

  Going to like, like weaning yourself off, you know, you get like the patch? You know what I'm saying? Where you get the gum? And there's like a regimented schedule for how you get off of it, where it's like, okay, to do this much today, then you do this much the next week.

• 16:38Adam Friedland?

  Does it work?

• 16:39Speaker 04

  I'm sure. A hell of people quit smoking cigarettes, but this doesn't have a, this has the unlimited. This is just a cart- a cartridge.

• 16:44Adam Friedland?

  You could do it in bed. I did it in bed. My girlfriend would be like, you're, you disgust me. It's the least sex- you, no, it's like, you're not like Humphrey Bogart for hitting a Juul.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  I get that reference.

• 16:55Adam Friedland?

  No girl's like, I've wanted to like, I want to ride him like a bike because she sees him with a geek bar, you know? It's not a sexy thing. You, no, sorry. Okay.

• 17:08Adam Friedland?

  Let's get into like, one thing I found interesting about you is that it came kind of out of your education. Like, your career kind of like, it seems like the schools that you went to kind of fostered you becoming an artist. Is that correct?

• 17:22Speaker 04

  I thought you were gonna go in a different direction. What I would say is like, I thought you were gonna say, so my first mixtape was called Tende. It was about a suspension from high school.

• 17:28Adam Friedland?

  For weed, for piffing.

• 17:30Speaker 04

  For weed, yeah, for piffing.

• 17:31Adam Friedland?

  I got suspended too, but I-

• 17:32Speaker 04

  Smoking weed?

• 17:33Adam Friedland?

  No, for, I told my dad, if I wanted to go to like this like, this teen summer program, I told my dad I'd get straight A's. And I got six A's and two B's. And I forged my report card. And my dad fucking bitch ass ratted on me to the school.

• 17:50Speaker 04

  That story took ten left turns. Like, I thought you was gonna get in trouble six things ago.

• 17:54Adam Friedland?

  I never, I don't-

• 17:55Speaker 04

  You said you forged your-

• 17:57Adam Friedland?

  It's family.

• 17:58Speaker 04

  Report card and your dad told on you to your school?

• 18:00Adam Friedland?

  Went to the dean, who looked like a mole. This guy looked like a mole.

• 18:03Speaker 04

  That shit is crazy.

• 18:04Adam Friedland?

  I got called in, I got, and I said to, when I got in trouble, I said, I was like, I'm lying to my parents and I'm not really lying to the school. So you got in trouble and then you wrote your first mixtape, 18 years old?

• 18:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think I was, yeah, I was 18, I started at the end of my high school, senior year of high school. And put it out, I think when I was 19.

• 18:25Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 18:25Speaker 04

  And, yeah, like, the influence of school and me feeling so dissociated from like, the building or the idea of work or the idea of these adults being teachers and not just being regular niggas that hated us.

• 18:40Adam Friedland?

  They're losers. Let's be honest, teachers are losers.

• 18:44Speaker 04

  So, so just let the record show, I don't, I don't think I'm losers, you know what I mean?

• 18:48Adam Friedland?

  Some of these guys we had, poof.

• 18:50Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, sorry, no, my bad.

• 18:51Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:52Speaker 04

  My teachers was losers for sure.

• 18:53Adam Friedland?

  They were losers.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  Teachers in general. Back in the day, back in the, I'm talking back in the day, I'm talking in-

• 18:59Adam Friedland?

  1943, 1944.

• 19:01Speaker 04

  In antiquity. I'm talking about like, fucking-

• 19:04Adam Friedland?

  Stone Age.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  I'm talking about-

• 19:08Speaker 04

  I love saying I'm talking about it's and you at living it sounds like a song to me.

• 19:11Adam Friedland?

  Go ahead. This is a track right now.

• 19:13Speaker 04

  I was gonna say like Aristotle.

• 19:17Adam Friedland?

  Pedophile, yeah.

• 19:18Speaker 04

  Okay, so let's so let's let's do it. Let's make a pivot.

• 19:21Adam Friedland?

  Okay.

• 19:25Speaker 04

  Let's go.

• 19:26Adam Friedland?

  He was a teacher though, right?

• 19:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Let's go Thales of Miletus, right? They what used to happen was one person would teach one person, right? So you get that one on one education.

• 19:38Adam Friedland?

  A mentor.

• 19:39Speaker 04

  Typically, it's your father, but yes, or you go to a mentor who's a philosopher and they teach you one on one. What the game is.

• 19:45Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 19:46Speaker 04

  And now we have a standardized education where we send thirty random kids into a room that sit all day with an adult. Who just got a divorce.

• 19:54Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  And so they had they owe nothing to this child. They don't think that, you know, and it's not this child. It's thirty child. And next year they'll have another thirty child. So it's like, and I should be saying children, but you gave me.

• 20:06Adam Friedland?

  Child, whatever. It's come on, dude.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  The point that I'm making though is like it's a I think the issues with teachers are that they're overwhelmed and they're human beings. So when they're, you know what I'm saying, getting fucking uh fucking. Markers thrown at them and TikTok challenged all over like they at a certain point they like they check out. And I think that, you know, back in the day. Post Stone Age, pre nineteen forty one, there was a lot more, um, you know, like direct. Education or at least like more sizable.

• 20:41Adam Friedland?

  To just be with one adult guy wearing a fucking toga. That'd be annoying.

• 20:44Speaker 04

  No, that would be whack.

• 20:45Adam Friedland?

  I want girls to be there and kind of try to be funny.

• 20:48Speaker 04

  Mentor, girls could teach you too.

• 20:49Adam Friedland?

  No, but you're like, but you can't, I mean, I guess in what I'm saying is is like a school is socializes you, right? Like.

• 20:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:56Adam Friedland?

  The fun part about school is that you like you're terrified to get beat like get called gay when you're in sixth grade like. You're trying to survive and it makes you a regular human being, right?

• 21:06Speaker 04

  No facts.

• 21:07Adam Friedland?

  Apparently they're trying to take bullying away.

• 21:11Adam Friedland?

  These kids are gonna become sociopaths. You develop a personality by being terrified, right? That's no, I mean it.

• 21:18Speaker 04

  Away is really funny.

• 21:20Adam Friedland?

  That's what I'm I'm I'm going to send my kids.

• 21:23Speaker 04

  They're trying to take bullying out of the schools. I did read that.

• 21:26Adam Friedland?

  You have to bring bullying back because that's really where you're like.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  That's what we're built on.

• 21:30Adam Friedland?

  I need through like a like Darwinism to find something to survive. You're like, "I'm gonna get really good at rap." And I was like, "I'm like, I have to do something."

• 21:42Speaker 04

  You better be funny.

• 21:43Adam Friedland?

  I have to be funny.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  Facts. I fucking feel you.

• 21:45Adam Friedland?

  Right? So like, if you send your kids to one of these goddamn sixty thousand dollar a year schools, where they're told that they're amazing, they're gonna be fucking sociopaths.

• 21:56Speaker 04

  Facts.

• 21:56Adam Friedland?

  You have to tell them that they suck and the teacher has to be a loser going through a divorce.

• 22:00Speaker 04

  Yes. That's how we got here.

• 22:03Adam Friedland?

  That's, sorry, that's my rant on schools. Um, no, but like you were also in writers programs and stuff like that too, right?

• 22:09Speaker 04

  We used to do after school, like the fucking, um...

• 22:12Adam Friedland?

  Jewish Student Alliance?

• 22:14Speaker 04

  Jewish Student Alliance was more for the pizza. There was a, there was a thing-

• 22:17Adam Friedland?

  What, Jewish pizza?

• 22:18Speaker 04

  No, dude.

• 22:19Adam Friedland?

  In this day and age, you can't just, just act like you didn't do it.

• 22:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm, I'm, like, when you go to JSU, you get, like, there's a dude named Mr. Katz. He orders a whole fucking pizza. Um, and I say whole fucking pizza, I mean a whole fucking pizza for me. He orders like ten pizzas for everybody. And then I would come in there, we'd get pizza, um... They would, they would talk about a lot of stuff.

• 22:43Adam Friedland?

  Israel.

• 22:43Speaker 04

  I can't, I don't know what they were talking about. I don't know what they were talking about. But what I'm saying is that-

• 22:48Adam Friedland?

  You just like Jewish girls.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  I'm, I'm not Jewish girls.

• 22:51Adam Friedland?

  Big ones with a skinny waist. I wanna ask you a question about like, your first mixtapes, like the first three, like, is there a freedom in like making art when you're so young? Cause you're like not afraid of like being corny?

• 23:04Speaker 04

  I think you're afraid, I think you still have, for the kids that I know, the kids that I grew up with, like, we were all like, we already believed that we were rappers. We weren't like gonna grow up and become rappers. Like, we were already taking everything that we did super seriously. So I don't think that there was ever a point where I had, I damn near had more pressure on me when I was making Assa Rap and coming, but I never really thought about it like that.

• 23:28Adam Friedland?

  As a young person?

• 23:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, because you believe that your existence and, and your identity is so based on this thing that you, that you at least felt like you were when you were in the comfort of like, "I go to fucking school every day. Like, my mom gives me lunch money." Like, versus being nineteen, being- Outside like having to figure out a way to pay for stuff. You like you you take it even more seriously, but yeah, all the way back when I was in the after school program, I was doing like fucking uh. What is it called? It was called a young, young Chicago authors. You get like prompts and you and like imagine all these kids getting up and they're doing poems about like real fucking trauma and fucking redlining. And like, we're all like, we're those kids like, but all the way back in twenty ten, twenty two thousand nine.

• 24:11Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 24:11Speaker 04

  We're like the kids wearing Kaffiyas and being like vocal and being like, we write poetry and we like, we're radical. Like, that's the kids that I grew up around. And then some kids also that grew up like Lucky and Mick Jenkins and certain people that came out of Chicago that like. You know what I'm saying? Like, it was a very, very diverse like group of people that were in the like after school shit that I was in. Rapping and stuff as a young age, but everybody took it super serious.

• 24:35Adam Friedland?

  Right, because there's such a, there's like a kind of a sweet naivety about being a kid where you're like, I'm a real rapper.

• 24:41Speaker 04

  Believe in.

• 24:41Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, I believe in this. I I feel like, I think a lot about like with music, like it's like. For like Nas made Illmatic when he was seventeen, right?

• 24:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:50Adam Friedland?

  You know, and it must be like, there's a freedom in expressing yourself as a young person that might like. You know what's like, you're not afraid of like, maybe I'm gonna fuck up something or some like.

• 25:01Speaker 04

  You know what I think it is? And no, you're right. It is a freedom in that you don't have certain knowledge that you. You know, think of as as fact or like a or a. Restrictions or boundaries about what you put out or what you say or how you say it or when you drop it when you're a kid, because there's this little thing in the back of your head. That's like, you know, this shit might not work out, you know, and not in a not as. And like how I just did, you know what I'm saying? As this gesture like, oh, this shit might not work out, so I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do. But like, I don't got kids, I don't got, you know what I'm saying? No real responsibilities. I haven't tasted the success yet, so.

• 25:37Adam Friedland?

  Stand up is the opposite, you know that. You don't like, most, most great stand ups get great like after forty. Like, it's very rare.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  I haven't heard that before.

• 25:45Adam Friedland?

  It's very rare for a young person to be like, like Chappelle was a phenom.

• 25:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:49Adam Friedland?

  At like.

• 25:50Speaker 04

  He was a child.

• 25:51Adam Friedland?

  At like eighteen, yeah, yeah. I I started stand up in DC where he started to stand up.

• 25:56Speaker 04

  You know Chappelle's my mentor.

• 25:57Adam Friedland?

  He's your, he's your Aristotle.

• 25:59Speaker 04

  Mentor, yep.

• 26:00Adam Friedland?

  He's your, your uh.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  The toga man.

• 26:02Adam Friedland?

  He's your toga man. He's your number one.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:06Adam Friedland?

  What has he taught you?

• 26:08Speaker 04

  A lot of things, a lot of like jokes that like if I repeat them, I'll get cancelled. But like, he's very, very-

• 26:13Adam Friedland?

  No, but say it's a quote.

• 26:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. Alright, so Dave Spill was talking about, no, I'm just joking. No, but like, he's like, I met him in twenty, I think fourteen, he had a show before he did the Netflix deal in Chicago. And we bought tickets, he invited me backstage, me and like my whole team, and we stayed there like smoking cigarettes and joking around a piano for like, till like five in the morning, and we stayed connected through that, he was at my wedding, he was like, you know, knows my kids, I like, this, I was just at his fiftieth last year in New York, like I, like this is like somebody that I really, really look up to, but what he taught me, and what I think really shines through in the album is that like, one of the most important things that you have is self-determination.

• 26:54Speaker 04

  And being able to define who you are and what you're gonna do, and like, we don't always talk about it, cause it was so long ago. How old are you, by the way?

• 27:01Adam Friedland?

  I'm thirty-eight.

• 27:02Speaker 04

  So, okay, so we, so do you remember when-

• 27:05Adam Friedland?

  He was my favorite-

• 27:05Speaker 04

  They blackballed him though?

• 27:06Adam Friedland?

  I remember when he went to Durban, like-

• 27:09Speaker 04

  And, but they didn't call it going to Durban, they called it going to Africa, and there's a sensationalizing part of it. And they said he was on crack.

• 27:14Adam Friedland?

  And, yeah-

• 27:15Speaker 04

  Even though he's a devout Muslim and never smoked crack.

• 27:17Adam Friedland?

  Well, beyond that, he was the funniest guy in the world.

• 27:20Speaker 04

  But he, but he just made a decision. And that's what I'm saying, is sometimes you make a decision or a, or a left turn, and media can be strong enough to push you in a direction where you feel like you're not in control anymore.

• 27:32Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:33Speaker 04

  Even though you're literally taking control.

• 27:34Adam Friedland?

  Hollywood likes to do that to black people.

• 27:37Speaker 04

  Eh, yeah, and people, period, kinda, you know?

• 27:39Adam Friedland?

  No, no, I think black guys-

• 27:40Speaker 04

  I appreciate you saying that.

• 27:41Adam Friedland?

  I mean, I don't know if it's, I, it's kind of a, yeah, yeah.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  But you're probably right.

• 27:45Adam Friedland?

  I mean, it's like, it's a, yeah, I mean, he's talked about it before too. Did he give you that type of advice, he's like, if shit gets too hot, just like, take time to yourself?

• 27:53Speaker 04

  He talked to me, like, he talks in metaphors, and I don't wanna butcher it, but he talked about this thing about taking your ball and going home, and the metaphor was about like-

• 28:01Adam Friedland?

  Classic.

• 28:01Speaker 04

  You go to the-

• 28:02Adam Friedland?

  The classic, take your ball and go home.

• 28:04Speaker 04

  You, you go to the court, you play, everybody wants to play with you, and use your basketball, and then when they start playing by weird rules, and hacking, and fouling you, and doing all of that shit, you take your ball- And you go home because they could find another ball, but is it gonna be the same ball? Hell, no. So they gonna wait till you come back and ball out like Jordan wearing a four or five. And that same spot is gonna be there for you, but you have to be strong enough to walk off and take your ball. That was one of the things he told me in twenty nineteen that like. So but he said a bunch of things. He said this thing about that I always quote about the yearbook photos. So he says like albums, whether it's a, you know, music album or comedy album. These albums are yearbook photos.

• 28:47Speaker 04

  They're not the photo of you as a human, even though as an artist you wanna do that. You wanna create.

• 28:52Adam Friedland?

  It's like where I'm at eighth grade.

• 28:54Speaker 04

  It's where you're at in eighth grade.

• 28:55Adam Friedland?

  I was busted.

• 28:56Speaker 04

  But it's important to take that yearbook photo because that's what you are. You're a documentarian. Your your your whole power is your voice and being able to say this thing happened. So you have to take those yearbook photos so that, you know, your thirty eight year old self, your forty eight year. Your your throughout your life, you can look back and people can get all these pictures of you at different times.

• 29:17Adam Friedland?

  Uh huh. Yeah, what is what's the distinction as someone that came up through mixtapes?

• 29:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:22Adam Friedland?

  What's the distinction there? Because like for me, I understood like when I was uh younger, like there was like the drought and the dedication and those were just like you could tell Lil Wayne was just like taking people's beats and then just doing the songs better, right?

• 29:38Speaker 04

  Jacking for beats is what they call it.

• 29:39Adam Friedland?

  And but like it seems like, you know, if you're reading this, it's too late. It just to me that just registers as an album like acid rap just kind of in my mind registers as an album. Like I don't understand what the distinction is in people's minds.

• 29:52Speaker 04

  I'm like a, what do they call it? Not an etymologist, but a linguist. So like my whole thing is like attributing power to words and like or like reevaluating the power of words or removing power from certain words. And so um the the whole mixtape thing was like a.

• 30:13Adam Friedland?

  Is it I'm just fucking around?

• 30:15Speaker 04

  No, but that's how the world perceives it because it's not commercial. But the the thing is that it's it's hella work. It's hella love.

• 30:22Adam Friedland?

  You want a Grammy?

• 30:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, off a mixtape. It's crazy. It is crazy.

• 30:26Adam Friedland?

  Like I don't understand like what makes Fifty Six Nights a mixtape and what makes Dirty Sprite two an album?

• 30:32Speaker 04

  It's its existence. To me, at the time when I was growing up, when I was putting out my first mixtapes, it's existence outside of the market, while having an influence on the market. So, albums are already within the commercial landscape of like, there's a system, there's labels that press records and have control over radio time and all these other things, and then there's, you know, then there's the culture separate from that, where I might burn 50 CDs and I know all the gas station niggas, I know all the, the radio DJs, I know all these people, and I'm gonna make this music.

• 31:05Adam Friedland?

  You're doing it out the trunk.

• 31:06Speaker 04

  I'm moving it out, exactly. So that's the mixtape vibe.

• 31:09Adam Friedland?

  DJ Paul style.

• 31:11Speaker 04

  You know so much!

• 31:12Adam Friedland?

  I love, I love music.

• 31:14Speaker 04

  Shout out to MC Hammer, like, niggas don't really talk about it, but MC Hammer and Master P a little bit later, they, they really like, started that out the trunk vibe.

• 31:23Adam Friedland?

  The Memphis?

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Multi-state, like, movements of that shit.

• 31:27Adam Friedland?

  The Memphis stuff, that, those DJ Paul mixtapes, like Little Fly and stuff, like, that is the cool, it's some of the coolest music in the world. It sounds like it's coming out of hell, because the production is so bad.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  360, yeah.

• 31:39Adam Friedland?

  It sounds like, it's like, coming out of the depths of hell. It's some of the coolest music I've ever listened to.

• 31:45Speaker 04

  No facts.

• 31:45Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  It's freeing.

• 31:49Adam Friedland?

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• 32:34Adam Friedland?

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• 33:19Adam Friedland?

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• 33:51Adam Friedland?

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• 34:36Adam Friedland?

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• 35:20Adam Friedland?

  Chime feels like progress.

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• 36:08Adam Friedland?

  So Chappelle's your mentor. Do you have a mentor in rap?

• 36:11Speaker 04

  My mentor passed away. So my mentor was a dude, and I'm so glad I get to say this on your show.

• 36:17Adam Friedland?

  No.

• 36:18Speaker 04

  My mentor is this dude named Mike Hawkins, and we called him Brother Mike.

• 36:22Adam Friedland?

  He was a rapper?

• 36:23Speaker 04

  He's a rapper, poet, revolutionary.

• 36:25Adam Friedland?

  He's from Chicago?

• 36:26Speaker 04

  Mentor in Chicago.

• 36:27Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  And a lot of the people that people fuck with from Chicago out of my era, Vic Mensa, No Name, Mick Jenkins, Lucky X, Nico. I'm missing, I'm missing a lot of people.

• 36:39Adam Friedland?

  Was Juice in your, in your scene?

• 36:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, Juice, Juice didn't go to the same after-school program, I think. I don't think he went to U-Media because he's from, he's from south suburbs. So he like came up, he's a little bit younger than me.

• 36:54Adam Friedland?

  He like emo.

• 36:56Speaker 04

  He kinda to me invented that. He invented that.

• 36:59Adam Friedland?

  No, there was emo before it, but it was emo rap.

• 37:02Speaker 04

  Emo, I'm saying like emo in the culture. Like in terms of like, he's like, I think one of the highest selling artists all time. Like his, his, uh, and, and definitely the highest streaming artist all time. So his music, and that's not posthumously, that's like during his lifetime. He's a, you know.

• 37:19Adam Friedland?

  He's a genius.

• 37:20Speaker 04

  Genius in his own right. And I got to spend a little bit of time with him before he passed a couple of times. And just like, got to pick his brain about that whole era. And he was aware of like, like, we thought of it as an after school program. But, but niggas outside of that shit looked at us like a super group. You know, I'm sure you've heard of, have you ever heard of Saba? Or Pivot? Or like, like all of these people came from this little, like, we used to go to this after school program and literally just be kids rapping.

• 37:46Adam Friedland?

  You were the good kids. You and Vic and, and Felix Peterman, you guys were the good kids.

• 37:52Speaker 04

  To you for sure. I think the point is like, there is a, a value in like, having a, uh, a cohort, like a group of niggas that all, all trying to do the same thing.

• 38:07Adam Friedland?

  A scene.

• 38:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, a scene that like, that blew up. I'll take a little bit more of it.

• 38:11Adam Friedland?

  Who else is in your scene? Wilco?

• 38:13Speaker 04

  Shout out to Wilco. They're a little bit older, but, but Wilco's from Chicago. Band, you know what I'm saying?

• 38:19Adam Friedland?

  Incredible band.

• 38:20Speaker 04

  Do you think your, do you think your fanbase knows Wilco?

• 38:23Adam Friedland?

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  Shout out to Wilco, shout out to Jeff Tweedy. You feel me?

• 38:29Adam Friedland?

  Dude, uh, yeah, you like John Prime? That's another Chicago guy.

• 38:33Speaker 04

  I feel like I know that name.

• 38:34Adam Friedland?

  He was like, uh, he made like country music. You have to go now?

• 38:37Speaker 06

  No, he's a guitarist, right?

• 38:39Speaker 04

  He's a guitarist?

• 38:40Adam Friedland?

  Oh, he's like, uh, yeah, it's like country folk, but he's from Chicago. Yeah, he's a, he's a god. He died, he died from COVID.

• 38:47Speaker 04

  Damn.

• 38:48Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, unfortunately.

• 38:48Speaker 04

  Maybe that's when I might have heard him. I feel like I heard that name recently.

• 38:51Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:52Speaker 04

  I'm gonna check him out.

• 38:52Adam Friedland?

  How much were you exposed to like, um, like, like old blues? Like, like Chicago's such a music city. It's like so rich in, in history. I'm reading the

• 39:02Speaker 04

  It was 20,000.

• 39:03Adam Friedland?

  The Keith Richards autobiography right now and like

• 39:06Speaker 04

  They signed in Chicago, didn't they?

• 39:08Adam Friedland?

  Well, they like, like being the coolest guy, I guess, when they were like young men was like having the best records. And they literally, they couldn't, they like had to write to Chess Records to get Muddy Waters records sent to England.

• 39:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:22Adam Friedland?

  And they like had this music that no one else in their country had heard, basically.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  Well, you know, the invention of like celebrity as a musician is all kind of based off of like

• 39:34Speaker 04

  trade embargoes opening up and being like, okay, we can move music and media as like a export from America. And so people that had never been to these other countries started becoming famous off of that. And famously, a lot of the, you know, like, you know, what we think of as like the vanguard of rock were all like influenced by like Chicago records finally coming out of, like you said, Chess Records.

• 39:59Adam Friedland?

  They are the, they're the GOAT swagged out white boy. They never even got the cultural appropriation, like accusations, the stones.

• 40:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:07Adam Friedland?

  They were just doing it black.

• 40:08Speaker 04

  But they went on tour with

• 40:09Adam Friedland?

  We fuck with this.

• 40:10Speaker 04

  Like they were opening up for Little Richard and for Muddy Waters and like literally singing their songs like that. And they, I think they don't get that because they were always open about where their influence was coming from.

• 40:21Adam Friedland?

  They loved it. They loved it. Little Richard took the Beatles on tour. He's a god, that guy.

• 40:27Speaker 04

  Hundred percent, hundred percent.

• 40:28Adam Friedland?

  Tooty Fruity is a song about butt sex.

• 40:30Speaker 04

  The architect, that's what he is. The architect of rock and roll, man.

• 40:33Adam Friedland?

  You know that song is, it's Tooty Fruity Big Booty?

• 40:37Speaker 04

  I did know that. I saw.

• 40:38Adam Friedland?

  He was a gay guy, like a psychopath gay guy that was just unreal musician. Yeah. Unbelievable guy. I love Little Richard. He influenced like Bob Dylan too.

• 40:48Speaker 04

  Everybody. He's the architect of rock and roll. That's the like, the deep thing about like all music and, and as time goes on is like we continue to do shows like this where we can have conversations. It's like, there's such a rich history of

• 41:03Speaker 04

  Black people making something raw.

• 41:06Adam Friedland?

  And then us stealing it.

• 41:07Speaker 04

  Well, it's popularizing it. We can call it whatever we want to call it.

• 41:10Adam Friedland?

  Especially gay black guys too.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  They'll, they'll.

• 41:12Adam Friedland?

  Chicago House, Chicago House is like literally.

• 41:16Speaker 04

  I didn't know that it was started by gay people, but I wouldn't be surprised because Chicago as like a culturally rich city like we have always been progressive and always been like on the forefront of like music getting introduced so like a lot of the, like you said, deep house jungle, all that shit comes from house music in Chicago. And that comes from the club scene or like the basement party scene.

• 41:38Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, it's amazing. Like techno comes from Detroit and house comes from Chicago and then it's, it was exported to Europe. And they don't understand that, I, I feel like when you go to like Germany, you go to like a, like, like a fucking, like, it sounds like, it sounds like The Matrix. It doesn't sound like, there's no like, there's no like black, there's no soul in it.

• 41:56Speaker 04

  It's super different.

• 41:57Adam Friedland?

  And it's just like they, but they're like consuming something that they don't realize kind of what it.

• 42:01Speaker 04

  What's funny though is I will say like Germany and like fucking Poland and Brits, they have a greater appreciation, I feel like, and knowledge of the history of something. So just yesterday, we was in Hyde Park in Chicago.

• 42:16Adam Friedland?

  Germany loves their history, yeah.

• 42:18Speaker 04

  We met ten like multinationals from like Korea and Germany and all these other places that were footworkers. You probably don't know what footwork is.

• 42:28Adam Friedland?

  Yes, I do.

• 42:29Speaker 04

  Okay, so like, think about how small of a, like you're, like most people, my fans, don't know what footwork is.

• 42:34Adam Friedland?

  I know what footwork is.

• 42:35Speaker 04

  But.

• 42:35Adam Friedland?

  Can you do it?

• 42:37Speaker 04

  I can. I won't today.

• 42:38Adam Friedland?

  I showed Herb a video of Derrick Rose doing it in high school. Have you seen that video?

• 42:42Speaker 04

  We've all seen that video, yeah.

• 42:43Adam Friedland?

  Oh my god, he's, he could have been a dancer.

• 42:45Speaker 04

  No, we all, we all grew up footworking, but it's such a small subculture of a subculture of a city in America that the idea that I'm, I'm telling you, I met like ten motherfuckers with thick accents that could footwork better than like a random person that grew up in Chicago. Because of the influence and the reverence that they pay overseas to, you know.

• 43:06Adam Friedland?

  DJ Rashad.

• 43:08Speaker 04

  That was my guy. That was my guy.

• 43:10Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, no, I, that music is incredible.

• 43:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:14Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 43:14Speaker 04

  Rest in peace DJ Rashad, that was my big brother, that was another one of my mentors.

• 43:17Adam Friedland?

  You, you knew him well?

• 43:18Speaker 04

  Very well. My first tour ever was with me and DJ Rashad.

• 43:21Adam Friedland?

  Have you, do you make music as well? Have you ever like-

• 43:23Speaker 04

  Like producing?

• 43:24Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, producing, yeah.

• 43:25Speaker 04

  I'm not that good at juke music like that, like, I got the same like two rhythms when it comes to making that, but like other rhythms for sure.

• 43:31Adam Friedland?

  It's cool how they, I don't think, I don't fully actually buy it, but when they say Rick Rubin doesn't know any of the buttons, he's just vibes, he has to know the buttons after all these years.

• 43:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm certain.

• 43:43Adam Friedland?

  But being so good at chilling, that you, that you can be like a, a super producer?

• 43:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:51Adam Friedland?

  That's the coolest kind of guy you can be.

• 43:53Speaker 04

  Not for sure. It is about vibes, it is about who you got in the room, in the studio, like, somebody can throw a vibe off or like set the-

• 43:59Adam Friedland?

  Dude, we have to go to the studio right now.

• 44:02Adam Friedland?

  I'll get the guitar. Get the guitar, get the guitar. No, um, yeah, I wanna, I wanna talk to you about like, kind of your path, cause it's, it's interesting, cause you, you got so successful so young, right? And now you're 32, right? And like, I think that like, yeah, like, does this feel, like, what is, what does the term comeback mean to you? In, in the context of your new album?

• 44:29Speaker 04

  That's a good question. I feel like, I guess it just means coming back to the fans. It's been six years since I dropped a project and like-

• 44:35Adam Friedland?

  Do you like the fans?

• 44:36Speaker 04

  I do.

• 44:37Adam Friedland?

  They can be annoying though.

• 44:38Speaker 04

  What's weird is like, my fans, like usually, we talked about the whole thing about trading cards and about the, you know, devaluing the human part of people that we consider to be celebrities or famous or whatever. But what's weird about my fans is like, because it was so grassroots and like me literally hand to handing mixtapes and like selling merch and doing small shows and growing over time, my fans are really like, my fans are really, really invested in like me as a person, and so when I meet them, like, I get stories that like fuck me up, like stories about how music genuinely saved their life, they were in a dark place or,

• 45:21Speaker 04

  you know, I got divorced when they got divorced, or I got married when they got married, or I had this when they had this, and like-

• 45:26Adam Friedland?

  They should go to therapy probably.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  They, they're telling me their story. No, but they're, like, it's like, uh, I think, uh- There's a, a value in being outside when you're me in that like the, the type of like fan that I have is so at random and so like so many demographics, so many different like kinds of people that like I never expected and the stories, they'd be like, you wanna sit and listen to it.

• 45:54Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 45:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:55Adam Friedland?

  People have said that to me that they were like, I was depressed and suicidal, but the Come Town podcast got me through it. I was like, you should go to therapy.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  No.

• 46:02Adam Friedland?

  Or, or listen to a, a

• 46:04Speaker 04

  CTP, I was gonna tell you, when I first saw you, I'm like, man.

• 46:08Adam Friedland?

  What's that?

• 46:09Speaker 04

  Come Town.

• 46:10Adam Friedland?

  Oh, you know Come Town?

• 46:11Speaker 04

  I was gonna tell you, I was gonna fucking kill myself.

• 46:13Adam Friedland?

  No, shut up dude. Really? What? From what?

• 46:17Speaker 04

  No, I'm just joking, I'm just joking. It's not funny to joke about killing yourself, but he gave me

• 46:22Adam Friedland?

  It's funny, you can say it.

• 46:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:24Adam Friedland?

  How's, you, you had a mentorship with, with Kanye as well?

• 46:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:28Adam Friedland?

  I mean, like, when I was in 11th grade, like, uh, College Dropout came out, it was

• 46:33Speaker 04

  That's so crazy. I think, and this is a compliment?

• 46:36Adam Friedland?

  He was the best.

• 46:36Speaker 04

  I think you're younger than me. I know you already told me that you're older than me, but

• 46:39Adam Friedland?

  I look young.

• 46:39Speaker 04

  You look young.

• 46:40Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:41Speaker 04

  When College Dropout came out, I was in 4th grade. That was the first hip hop album I ever had.

• 46:44Adam Friedland?

  I, I had, no, well, I had, uh, Ready to Die. I liked Biggie before that.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  You are older than me.

• 46:51Adam Friedland?

  No, no, 5th grade.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  Do you remember when Biggie died?

• 46:53Adam Friedland?

  No, uh, yeah, it was on the news. I was a little

• 46:56Speaker 04

  I was not watching the fucking news. I was watching Sesame Street.

• 46:58Adam Friedland?

  No, no, I, I, I remember Mace. I remember like Harlem World. I remember like, uh,

• 47:03Speaker 04

  That's post Biggie. That's towards the end of Biggie's career.

• 47:06Adam Friedland?

  I remember Life After Death. I, 5th grade, I was sick. I was home from school sick and I watched Jerry Springer and then Maury and then I watched MTV and then I, I heard Feel So Good by Mace and it became my favorite song in 5th grade.

• 47:19Speaker 04

  That's ill.

• 47:19Adam Friedland?

  And then middle school Eminem.

• 47:21Speaker 04

  When we was in 6th grade, Mace had a comeback and he had a song called Welcome Back and that was our shit, bro.

• 47:28Adam Friedland?

  He also found God.

• 47:29Speaker 04

  And Breathe Step Shake? Breathe, step, shake, let it go. That's how I learned how to Harlem Shake.

• 47:35Adam Friedland?

  Dude, you got the second No, I'm from Las Vegas, Nevada.

• 47:38Speaker 04

  I didn't know that.

• 47:39Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. I was, uh, you got the second wave, Mace. I got the

• 47:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, you got the first, you got the OG. That's what I was just saying. It's like you were already a formed hip hop fan by the time you got to Kanye.

• 47:49Adam Friedland?

  Well, well, the other thing is the ju, the boys my, my age.

• 47:53Speaker 04

  What are you stuttering on?

• 47:54Adam Friedland?

  We love, we love rap.

• 47:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But for me, I'm saying like-

• 47:59Adam Friedland?

  The white boys our age, yeah.

• 48:01Speaker 04

  Imagine your introduction to, like, you said that your introduction was Mace. And like, Mace, low key, has a lot of similarities to Ye to me. And they worked together before. Kanye did the Welcome Back Mace album.

• 48:13Adam Friedland?

  Well, he, that's the other thing about Kanye that I don't think people say enough is that he could potentially be the best producer of all time as well.

• 48:21Speaker 04

  It's Ye, man.

• 48:22Adam Friedland?

  It is crazy to me.

• 48:23Speaker 04

  It's Ye.

• 48:24Adam Friedland?

  Are you guys in touch these days? Is Ye alright?

• 48:27Speaker 04

  You know what's so crazy is people ask me that, like, I'm his therapist, like, I don't know. Like, I'm, I mean, like, I'm sure that he's, that he's fine. I think he just did, like, a sold-out show in Korea or something like that. Huge show in Korea, but I, I'm, like, I haven't, like, I have not texted him recently. That's the, that's the point.

• 48:43Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You, you wanna tell him I'm chill? Some of them are okay?

• 48:47Speaker 04

  I'll try and-

• 48:48Adam Friedland?

  No, I'm just joking.

• 48:51Adam Friedland?

  No, I gotta say this, like, um, the antisemitism is talked about a lot nowadays is really annoying for me because it's like, a lot of the time, it's just people criticizing Israel and it's like, uh, it's, it's just a bad faith argument and not what antisemitism is. It's like, you criticize a genocide, that's not antisemitism.

• 49:10Speaker 04

  Definitely two separate things.

• 49:11Adam Friedland?

  But, um, the first time, I didn't feel it growing up, ever, but when Kanye said, um, "I want the Jewish kids that love me to ask, uh, my, their dads why Ye is mad at us", I did go, I got my-

• 49:24Speaker 04

  You said you went to your dad?

• 49:25Adam Friedland?

  I got my feelings hurt. I was like, but I lo-, I love you. He's, I mean, he's so important to, like, boys my age.

• 49:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:33Adam Friedland?

  When we were in high school because he was the first, like, uh, he was like, he went, he worked at The Gap and stuff.

• 49:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:40Adam Friedland?

  He wasn't, he wasn't, like, uh, it was like you could be a nerd also, kinda be good at music, but, uh, no, I don't, I mean, he's my favorite musician.

• 49:49Speaker 04

  I think, like, what good artistry should do is make you wanna be yourself. Like, I think anybody that ever fell in love with an artist, they were like, damn. It's, it's also, it's obviously like, oh, this person's talented, their voice sounds good and shit like that, but like-

• 50:03Speaker 04

  I feel like most people fall in love like when it gets past the superficial phase, they fall in love with like artistry and like well-written songs and songs that feel like it speaks to them and they're like, damn, this person is being themselves. And I think like, no matter who that person was for you, if it was Yay, if it was Stevie Wonder, if it was whatever the fuck it was.

• 50:23Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 50:23Speaker 04

  You fall in love with the idea of somebody being themselves and I think he was, he's always like unapologetically gonna say the wildest shit that comes to his brain. And I think that like for a lot of people, when we were younger, it was like, it felt like empowering.

• 50:38Adam Friedland?

  I don't think he was that wild early on. He was talking about like,

• 50:41Speaker 04

  When it was coming out though?

• 50:42Adam Friedland?

  He was at college and stuff and he wanted to drop out of art school and stuff like that.

• 50:46Speaker 04

  I wrote my college essay when I was, when I thought I was gonna go to college. I wrote it like from the perspective of like, I was like, this is, I'm never gonna go to college. I wrote a college essay? That's a repressed memory. I wrote a college essay.

• 51:00Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 51:01Speaker 04

  Because I went to a college prep school. So in Chicago, you go to public school for grammar school. And then-

• 51:06Adam Friedland?

  You went to a magnet school?

• 51:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:07Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 51:08Speaker 04

  And then when you go to, when you go to, and so magnet school is a public school that basically pulls kids from black and brown neighborhoods or different parts of the, of the, of the school system.

• 51:19Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 51:19Speaker 04

  Or neighborhoods to go to a school that has like, you know, that's for smart kids, right?

• 51:23Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 51:24Speaker 04

  And then-

• 51:24Adam Friedland?

  I went to a magnet school too.

• 51:27Speaker 04

  Vibes.

• 51:27Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, it was embarrassing.

• 51:29Speaker 04

  And then when you go to high school, you could do this thing called selective enrollment where you can test if your school is like a good school. You could test into like another good school. Where you don't have to, your parents don't have to pay, but you get a good education. And I went to, I went to Jones and was like exposed to a lot of shit that I wasn't typically exposed to and it was like a very artsy school. And I guess like in that time, like I learned a lot about, I think I lost my train of thought. I feel like I forgot what you asked me.

• 51:59Adam Friedland?

  It's fine. You went to a school that inspired you to be an artist.

• 52:01Speaker 04

  To be an artist, yeah.

• 52:02Adam Friedland?

  Kanye went to art school too and he dropped out and stuff like that.

• 52:05Speaker 04

  There's plenty of famous people.

• 52:06Adam Friedland?

  For me, it's like, you know what it was? I'll tell you my age again. Uh, when the Harry Potter books were coming up, growing up?

• 52:11Speaker 04

  I remember that.

• 52:12Adam Friedland?

  He was one year older than me and I feel like each year he went back to Hogwarts. I was like, now I'm that age. And it's like, yeah, when he wanted to like, he wanted to clap Cho Chang. I was feeling that kind of way at school. Yeah, you know, like he wanted to take down Cho Chang.

• 52:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:30Adam Friedland?

  Why am I talking?

• 52:31Speaker 04

  Why is that name so fucked up though?

• 52:33Adam Friedland?

  Why am I talking? I mean, Harry Potter is so racist in retrospect, yeah. Yeah, they, they ask.

• 52:38Speaker 04

  But I'm a huge, huge Harry Potter fan.

• 52:41Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, me too.

• 52:42Speaker 04

  I call myself on a lot of my projects.

• 52:44Adam Friedland?

  Harry Potter?

• 52:45Speaker 04

  The boy who lived.

• 52:46Adam Friedland?

  Oh, really?

• 52:47Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 52:47Adam Friedland?

  Who's the Voldemort in your life?

• 52:55Adam Friedland?

  King Von. No, I'm just kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

• 52:59Speaker 04

  Chill, chill, chill.

• 53:00Adam Friedland?

  I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

• 53:01Speaker 04

  Chill, chill, chill.

• 53:01Adam Friedland?

  I'm kidding. Were those guys nice to you even though you got, you went to a good, got good grades and stuff? I would imagine it would be a little, little bit like, I don't want them to think that I'm a nerd.

• 53:11Speaker 04

  I'd just be chilling, look.

• 53:12Adam Friedland?

  Cause I was a nerd too, right? And like the, I used to, cause I liked weed.

• 53:16Speaker 04

  I appreciate that you, that you uh...

• 53:17Adam Friedland?

  Cause I liked, I liked weed and that's how I got the cool kids to like this, the kids that were being bad.

• 53:23Speaker 04

  What's the word for like you like?

• 53:25Adam Friedland?

  What?

• 53:26Speaker 04

  Like you vibe with somebody, but I can't even think of the word.

• 53:29Adam Friedland?

  Thrilling.

• 53:30Speaker 04

  It's like um...

• 53:32Adam Friedland?

  Incredible to be around.

• 53:36Speaker 04

  I can't think of the word, resonate.

• 53:38Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, I'm a friendly guy, yeah.

• 53:39Speaker 04

  You feel, I feel like you, but what I was gonna say is like, the way that Chicago operates, we all gotta, we all gotta see each other, we all gotta work together, so like...

• 53:50Adam Friedland?

  So they wanted you to get good grades? They were like, I'm proud of you for getting good grades?

• 53:54Speaker 04

  It's not like California, I think what you're referencing is like when niggas be like, this is, this is a good nigga, he's gonna go to the NFL.

• 54:01Adam Friedland?

  Like Kendrick.

• 54:01Speaker 04

  Stay out the streets.

• 54:02Adam Friedland?

  Like Kendrick, right?

• 54:03Speaker 04

  I hear what you're saying.

• 54:04Adam Friedland?

  It's like when I first saw the Don't Like video, I was like, it was scary to me because there was no girls in it. And there were no, there were just boys.

• 54:12Speaker 04

  I was just talking about that.

• 54:12Adam Friedland?

  They were in an empty apartment, there was no hoes. Like rap was always about trying to get a lot of girls, right? And I'm like, these kids just have guns and they're, they have their own apartment? Whose apartment is that? They're children. And they, I, if they, and they're your age demographic too, and you and Vic must've just been like a little bit butterflies, no? Before you met the lads?

• 54:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was, I think it's like...

• 54:37Adam Friedland?

  Come on, you could be real about this.

• 54:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I mean, they're also younger than me.

• 54:41Adam Friedland?

  Are they younger?

• 54:42Speaker 04

  They're younger than me.

• 54:42Adam Friedland?

  That makes it even scarier.

• 54:44Speaker 04

  About like two years.

• 54:44Adam Friedland?

  That makes it scarier too, because you know the younger kids have less of a moral compass.

• 54:49Speaker 04

  To be honest, they got on before us. Like, if I'm being super real, if it wasn't for Keith.

• 54:55Adam Friedland?

  Of course.

• 54:56Speaker 04

  Von was later, but Keith, Dirk is kind of my same generation. And not generation, we're all like close in age, but like he was like that second wave. But like Keith and King Louis both blew up out of Chicago around the same time, 2011, 2012.

• 55:08Adam Friedland?

  Like 14, 15 years old.

• 55:10Speaker 04

  Louis is older than us, but Keith, yeah, younger than me. And around that same time was when MTV started coming to Chicago to do documentaries, like a documentary series on Chicago called, I think it's called My Block Chicago.

• 55:23Adam Friedland?

  The Vice one is really crazy.

• 55:25Speaker 04

  Vice one is crazy.

• 55:26Adam Friedland?

  The Vice one is racism. The Vice one is like...

• 55:29Speaker 04

  Most of those documentaries are racism.

• 55:31Adam Friedland?

  We're here at L Block, where the child murders are happening, yeah.

• 55:38Adam Friedland?

  Like, I saw an interview recently with Sosa where he's like, like, when we were consuming it from the outside, I was like, people, I think people said that he was autistic, and that's why he's so good at hooks.

• 55:50Speaker 04

  That's called racism.

• 55:51Adam Friedland?

  Well, no, but then it just, he was like, there was an interview with him last year, and he's like, "Yeah, I just had to get out of Chicago." He's like, "Now I live in LA," you know? He's just, he was like on a lot of drugs, I think, as a kid, probably.

• 56:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it's also environment. Like, you gotta realize like...

• 56:07Adam Friedland?

  He just seems so, like, he's doing great right now.

• 56:09Speaker 04

  Vegas, right?

• 56:10Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, Las Vegas.

• 56:10Speaker 04

  Vegas is super different from New York, and even though it's close, I'm sure it's super different from LA. And when I say LA, I mean like in terms of Hollywood, like, in terms of how many opportunities there are to be on camera. Well, I feel like Las Vegas is happening. I'm not saying it's not a big city, it's just like Chicago, it's a big city, but it's not a media export. So like, you, so imagine when like, if Vegas had a Keith, if like there was somebody that was so, you know, transcendent.

• 56:40Adam Friedland?

  Jimmy Kimmel.

• 56:40Speaker 04

  It's like, Jimmy Kimmel's from Vegas?

• 56:42Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, he is.

• 56:43Speaker 04

  Crazy place to be from.

• 56:44Adam Friedland?

  Greg Maddox, who else is from Vegas? Panic at the Disco, The Killers.

• 56:50Speaker 04

  CSI Las Vegas.

• 56:52Adam Friedland?

  CSI Las Vegas, shouts out CSI Las Vegas. They were kind of the King Von of my childhood.

• 56:58Speaker 04

  I think there's a, there's a, there's a...

• 57:02Speaker 04

  There's a time period that happened where Chicago became the epicenter of like, of hip-hop music and what was gonna be the new thing that white folks were scared of. And the, and that popularity grew so many careers and, and really created a scene in Chicago that like, you know, I think like, put us at the forefront of music for a long time. And even to this day, like, I think, Chicago slang, Chicago artists like still have a great influence. But it's not New York, it's not LA, so.

• 57:34Adam Friedland?

  Well, for a long time, it was only New York and LA, then Atlanta, then a little bit Houston.

• 57:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:40Adam Friedland?

  And then, yeah.

• 57:41Speaker 04

  Everybody has their regional, you know, points in time.

• 57:44Adam Friedland?

  It was just Common, basically. And then Kanye.

• 57:46Speaker 04

  Kanye, Common. It, it, I feel like, a, a, and then, you know.

• 57:51Adam Friedland?

  Uh, you, you, uh,

• 57:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:53Adam Friedland?

  You were with someone for 22 years?

• 57:56Speaker 04

  Who?

• 57:57Adam Friedland?

  Your ex-partner, your ex-wife? Or you knew her for 22?

• 58:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, we grew up in Chicago together, so I've known her for like, most of my life, yeah.

• 58:04Adam Friedland?

  So, in doing the research for this, like, I saw like, the way people are so wrapped up in like, your, like, it has to be a product of celebrity, that people are like, I thought this was relationship goals, but they, you know, like, that people are like so invested in it in a certain way. And the first thought I had was like, going back to that, uh, future point, right?

• 58:26Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:26Adam Friedland?

  Futures like, uh, was it, do you think that people are so wrapped up in, in your shit? Because they thought of you as like, he's the good, happy, go, go lucky guy?

• 58:37Speaker 04

  I think that's super possible. I think like, there's an outside, like, when you put out, when you publish something, you publish the work, but you also just publish the cover, right? So it's like, people don't have to open the book to like, know what everything's about. They just have to see it on the shelf. And that metaphor, I'm just saying like, if I'm a celebrity, like, everybody that watches that interview doesn't necessarily do a deep dive into my music. They're just introduced to me in this video. And so I think like, with celebrity and with like, personal lives being shared, I think that there's people that don't have a full context of, of anything other than maybe something that they've read, or like, something that I've put out there about how long we've known each other, or, you know, what the relationship feels like.

• 59:19Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 59:20Speaker 04

  Versus like, people that are my fans know like, I was, you know. I got married like four years after I had already had my kid like I've known this person for a long time we've been in and out of things but we have like a you know really really strong relationship and I think that when I was very public about being married to her and being happy about getting married and being

• 59:44Adam Friedland?

  Do you regret being so open about your personal life?

• 59:47Speaker 04

  No, I'm a rapper like that's a that's a big part of being a rapper is being open about your public life and being I'm sorry about your personal life and being open to criticizing to analyze the real world as well as your own vulnerabilities.

• 1:00:01Adam Friedland?

  It's a little bit annoying right like you're going through a personal experience and then people have opinions on like

• 1:00:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's only annoying when you don't like the opinions but like when they're good opinions don't you like it like when somebody's

• 1:00:12Adam Friedland?

  No, I don't care what a stranger thinks about my

• 1:00:15Speaker 04

  You guys turn the cameras off since niggas don't care.

• 1:00:18Adam Friedland?

  No, no, I'm just kidding, I'm kidding.

• 1:00:19Speaker 04

  No, no, but I'm just making a point, I was just joking.

• 1:00:22Adam Friedland?

  We gotta rap?

• 1:00:23Speaker 04

  Sorry for saying that, I was just making, I was making a point.

• 1:00:25Adam Friedland?

  I wanna go, I wanna get back to the the point I made about Future right like no one's team Russell Wilson everyone's like yeah Future he's got he's you know

• 1:00:35Speaker 04

  Russell Wilson didn't make March Madness but like people love Russell Wilson.

• 1:00:39Adam Friedland?

  What I'm saying is like people are like I what I found was like and I didn't know about this because I don't like consume this type of media but like the response to your divorce is like that people were like had were like felt betrayed or something because it was relationship goals and it's like get a fucking life like it's like uh I mean Future doesn't get that right because it's like the assumption is is like he has to get pussy.

• 1:01:01Speaker 04

  I was making this point earlier. Like everything that we see like celebrities are the flagship of conversation we push product right so when any headline that you get from a blog or from a shade room or anything it's it's pushing a story but it's also pushing a specific moral boundary where people have to feel you know hot or cold on either side and so everything is politicized even if we're not talking about politics that's just but that's the way the media works.

• 1:01:30Adam Friedland?

  It's bad for society though no one would like no one was like No one like, there was the Beatles or like Elvis Presley. No one would like felt like personally betrayed by their personal lives like that. There was a, there was a distance between the, the artist and then the audience. And I think probably the internet.

• 1:01:51Speaker 04

  Early, yeah.

• 1:01:52Adam Friedland?

  Probably the internet has, the internet has blurred that line.

• 1:01:56Speaker 04

  Remember when like women couldn't wear skirts past their knees on TV? Like remember when like people couldn't be. Well, there was a time when like it was controversial to have a black person on TV and sharing the same set as a white person. So I'm saying like through media as it's, as society and culture has revolutionized. There's been more and more like a, a close relationship to TV and of, and, and it's grown as society becomes cooler with things that used to be taboo.

• 1:02:22Adam Friedland?

  Are you single gentleman now or?

• 1:02:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:25Adam Friedland?

  Have you considered doing, doing what, what the god did? You get like a girl that looks a little bit like the last one and then make her be naked?

• 1:02:36Adam Friedland?

  What?

• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  That is hilarious.

• 1:02:39Adam Friedland?

  So, uh, you've traveled a lot, right? You, uh, you said that, uh, I've seen other interviews with you, like Ghana was a heavy influence.

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  Super, yeah.

• 1:02:49Adam Friedland?

  Uh, tell us about like the, this is, this the CD?

• 1:02:54Speaker 04

  So this is, this, this is the CD, right?

• 1:02:56Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:56Speaker 04

  And people don't typically have CD players in them. I'm sure you probably don't. So what I did with this project was in, in attempt to create a physical handoff with, between me and my fans. Cause that's what people used to really like is like, I could get something that I owned forever that I got from this artist that I love.

• 1:03:16Adam Friedland?

  Physical.

• 1:03:16Speaker 04

  I gave them some physical, but more importantly, I wanted to give them something that, um, was, uh, functional. So this has, uh, NFC technology. I'm sure you know what NFCs are, but.

• 1:03:28Adam Friedland?

  National Football Conference.

• 1:03:30Speaker 04

  That's incorrect. So what NFC is, is it's a, uh, near field communication. So what you could do with this CD. Is you could just tap your phone straight to it without like using a QR code or anything. And a link will populate and come down and it'll take you to the album so you can Bluetooth it. Um, straight from your phone. So at any point, like if you keep your CD, you could play it on any speaker.

• 1:03:53Adam Friedland?

  You're the first person ever?

• 1:03:55Speaker 04

  First person.

• 1:03:55Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 1:03:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:56Adam Friedland?

  You invented a, a new thing? It's like when two iPhones touch and then you-

• 1:04:01Speaker 04

  It's the same technology like when you use like your, uh-

• 1:04:03Adam Friedland?

  It feels intimate when, when you do, when you touch another person's, uh-

• 1:04:07Speaker 04

  And you feel it and it's like a little like thing that happens and vibrates and stuff.

• 1:04:10Adam Friedland?

  There's a vibrate and you're like, are we fucking right now? It's a little bit like that. Uh, can you-

• 1:04:15Speaker 04

  Facts.

• 1:04:15Adam Friedland?

  So what do you, like, your first single is, is called Tree, right?

• 1:04:19Speaker 04

  My first song's called Tree. So it was, uh, a, a record that took a long time to put out. Uh, that I love dearly and I feel like is a good thesis for the project. It's a, it's, it's not, uh, it doesn't cover all the topics of the project, but the song itself is about, um, you know, my mom, my, you know, how we grew up with these certain taboos around weed, you know, like how we, how weed is represented when it comes to hip hop artists and black culture versus how we look at it as a financial, like, yeah, exactly, like a, you know, so there's a,

• 1:04:58Speaker 04

  there, there's, there's a separation there, but it's also mainly, uh, about the inequities in the cannabis industry. Um, how niggas go to jail, but other people make billions. There's a, there's a, there's a overall, oh, I'm sorry, there's an overarching disparity when it comes to ownership in agriculture. Black farmers, um, access to produce, access to, to, to fresh foods and access to the monies that those things make. And there's a, a microcosm of that is in the cannabis industry, but there's like, there's a larger conversation that I'm hav- having that has a lot of connection to sharecropping and to slavery and just the way that capitalism was allowed to, to, to go crazy in this country.

• 1:05:43Speaker 04

  So this whole album is called Star Line. Um, it's named after, uh, the black star line, which was started by Marcus Garvey in the twenties. He, he started the first ever black owned shipping and trading company. He owned these big ass ocean liners that would send- Beans, coffee, all types of stuff um for other companies to South America and Central America.

• 1:06:02Adam Friedland?

  Did he print off that?

• 1:06:04Speaker 04

  He he ma- he did. He had a he had a place called uh.

• 1:06:07Adam Friedland?

  Dirk has a trucking company.

• 1:06:09Speaker 04

  Dirk does have a so all of this is in line. There's there's a lot of actual trucking companies that are named Starline because that's typically like a freighting company name. And the point of this project is to kind of like for the first time, I think, at the forefront of hip hop highlight. Black entrepreneurship.

• 1:06:29Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:30Speaker 04

  Uh, black self determination and and and I think

• 1:06:39Speaker 04

  just shining like I feel like that's what you you see this. So this was painted by Brandon Bro.

• 1:06:44Adam Friedland?

  It's the same art from uh Acid Rap and Coloring Book. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:49Speaker 04

  And what he really focuses on is the composition, which is always typically the same with like the portraiture in the center. But he's very really focused on like the fucking uh the background.

• 1:07:01Adam Friedland?

  Aurora Borealis.

• 1:07:02Speaker 04

  Aurora Borealis.

• 1:07:04Adam Friedland?

  Also known as the Northern Lights if you're not a nerd. Have you ever seen it?

• 1:07:07Speaker 04

  I've never been there. You gotta go to Iceland or something.

• 1:07:10Adam Friedland?

  We gotta go Iceland. Boys trip, dude.

• 1:07:13Speaker 04

  I like the way you said it the first time.

• 1:07:14Adam Friedland?

  La- last trip. Iceland, but last trip. I think we should go back to illegal personally. It's not cool anymore now.

• 1:07:23Speaker 04

  No, facts.

• 1:07:24Adam Friedland?

  It's too much. We you walk around New York, it's just like these and the dispensaries, the aesthetics. They don't have good. They don't have like like uh like cool like they look gross.

• 1:07:35Speaker 04

  It's a government scam.

• 1:07:37Adam Friedland?

  I think it is, actually.

• 1:07:38Speaker 04

  It's a government scam. Remember when they legalized? I keep saying remember like you were there. I'm just saying like remember in history.

• 1:07:43Adam Friedland?

  I remember all of it.

• 1:07:44Speaker 04

  The end of prohibition.

• 1:07:45Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Speaker 04

  Same vibes.

• 1:07:47Adam Friedland?

  They did that because the Great Depression.

• 1:07:49Speaker 04

  They did it because of the commercialization of alcohol and how much they. could, you know, viably make off of, you know, not allowing gangsters or black folks to be the only people making money off of liquor.

• 1:08:03Adam Friedland?

  Really? I think us boys were making a little bit of money too.

• 1:08:06Speaker 04

  Hey, man. Get in where you fit in, you know?

• 1:08:08Adam Friedland?

  I think us boys used to print a little bit off of that.

• 1:08:11Speaker 04

  Us boys too.

• 1:08:12Adam Friedland?

  I mean, but it must have made like hitting beer so cool when it was illegal.

• 1:08:18Speaker 04

  Well, you could also go blind because it's somebody's uncle making moonshine. So, regulation isn't bad, but also you don't know who's regulating.

• 1:08:25Adam Friedland?

  I think that's an anti, anti.

• 1:08:26Speaker 04

  That's anti woke.

• 1:08:27Adam Friedland?

  That's the anti beer.

• 1:08:28Speaker 04

  That's anti beer.

• 1:08:29Adam Friedland?

  That's the anti beer propaganda, dude.

• 1:08:30Speaker 04

  Big beer.

• 1:08:31Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, beating off does not make you blind. Uncle's moonshine does not make you blind. Anyway, Chance, we have to go.

• 1:08:38Speaker 04

  Adam Friedland, baby.

• 1:08:39Adam Friedland?

  Once again, she's upset at me?

• 1:08:42Adam Friedland?

  Are you upset at me? Maybe a little bit.

• 1:08:44Speaker 04

  Did you make her upset last time?

• 1:08:45Adam Friedland?

  No, no, we were just.

• 1:08:46Speaker 04

  This is my homegirl.

• 1:08:47Adam Friedland?

  Herb was like, I could go all day. He's like, no, we're staying. I was like, I can't.

• 1:08:50Speaker 04

  No, yeah, we're late to, we gotta go to this premiere.

• 1:08:52Adam Friedland?

  Where do you have to go?

• 1:08:52Speaker 04

  We're going to this premiere. Look, no, but this is real because your shit is huge. Is Green mean that it's on? Is this our cam? It's not live, so you can edit however, but basically, hey, make sure you get my album Starline. It comes out August 15th, the same day as Spike Lee and Denzel Washington's new movie that I'm going to see the premiere of right now.

• 1:09:12Adam Friedland?

  You, you're gonna go right now?

• 1:09:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, we gotta, that's why we're late.

• 1:09:15Adam Friedland?

  You got plus one?

• 1:09:16Speaker 04

  I don't have one.

• 1:09:17Adam Friedland?

  Come on, bro.

• 1:09:18Speaker 04

  I had a plus one, but I already gave it to Taren, so.

• 1:09:20Adam Friedland?

  Really? Oh, you're better friends with him. Yeah, I guess so.

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

  But.

• 1:09:23Adam Friedland?

  Enjoy, dude. I'm a big fan of Denzel Washington, actually. He's one of my favorite actors. I'm gonna name my first son Denzel Friedland.

• 1:09:30Speaker 04

  Let me write all this down so I can tell him when I.

• 1:09:33Adam Friedland?

  My guy.

• 1:09:34Speaker 04

  Appreciate you, man. That was fun, man.

• 1:09:35Adam Friedland?

  I appreciate it, man.

• 1:10:22Speaker 06

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