E-40 — “Tell Me When To Go”

Get hyphy and go dumb—we’re headed to the Bay Area to talk E-40. This week, Rob pays tribute to the wonderful dictionary of hip-hop slang, much of which was coined by E-40 himself. He looks back on how the hyphy movement, spearheaded by West Coast rappers Mac Dre and Keak da Sneak, made a massive impact locally even if it didn’t achieve the nationwide recognition of similar genres, like crunk. Later, Rob is joined by The Ringer’s Logan Murdock to discuss what E-40 means to the Bay Area and the legacy of hyphy. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Logan Murdock Producers: Julianna Ress, Chris Sutton, Justin Sayles, and Olivia Crerie CONNECT Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/60songsthatexplainthe90s TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@60songsthatexplainthe90s (00:00) Intro: The most “acknickulous” made-up words (18:29) This week’s song: “Tell Me When to Go” by E-40 (21:11) The Federation, The Click, and E-40’s early tracks (35:24) E-40’s massive discography (45:05) Keak da Sneak, Mac Dre, and the hyphy movement (51:20) E-40 blows up with “Tell Me When to Go” (57:21) Interview with Logan Murdock (01:42:47) Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:07Speaker 00

  Are you familiar with the term pompetis?

• 0:34Speaker 00

  The pompetis of love, the swaggering, stoned, white funk pseudo eroticism of love. Here, of course, we have the Steve Miller Band with their 1973 dad rock staple, The Joker. It's dad rock to me, dude. To this day, I hear The Joker and I think about being a little kid, driving around with my dad, driving to Little League, or perhaps Walmart. The pompetis of love and the woo-woo get all the attention, but dig the sauce. Steve Miller just put on Maurice. I always forget Steve Miller pompetously rolls the R in Maurice. I can't do that. I can't roll my Rs and it makes me so mad.

• 1:15Speaker 00

  Pompetis of love, of course, is a famous made up rock and roll phrase in the grand tradition of a wop bop a loop bop a lot bam boom, or do do run run run, do do run run. Though, as Steve Miller has explained in various interviews, in this case, Steve was charismatically misquoting an old doo-wop song. Are you familiar with the term pismotality?

• 1:49Speaker 00

  Ah, see, here it's more like the puppetutes of love with no M. Puppetutes sounds vaguely French, which of course adds to the pseudo eroticism. Here we have Los Angeles doo-wop quartet, The Medallions, with their 1954 regional hit, The Letter. And while I'm very pleased to know where Steve Miller's pompetis of love comes from, more importantly, yo, what is pismotality with a Z or perhaps two Z's? Pismotality, that sounds obscene. So in 1996, the actor John Cryer of Pretty in Pink and Two and a Half Men fame, in

• 2:30Speaker 00

  1996, John Cryer co-wrote and starred in a whole ass movie called The Pompetis of Love, an indie romance situation that Roger Ebert gave two out of four stars. And somebody told John Cryer about this old song, The Letter, about the true origin of The Pompetis of Love. And John ended up talking with Vernon Green, leader of Los Angeles doo-wop quartet, The Medallions, and Vernon helpfully defined both these terms. According to Vernon, quote, "Pismotality described words of such secrecy that they could only be spoken to the one you loved," end quote. This explanation was printed in 1996 in the great Chicago Reader column, The Straight

• 3:15Speaker 00

  Dope, written by Cecil Adams. The Straight Dope, basically, was where a guy in the newspaper would Google stuff for you before Google was invented. And as for puppetutes, Vernon says that's, quote, "A term I coined to mean a secret paper doll fantasy figure who would be my everything and bear my children," end quote. That's not very progressive of Vernon, I suppose, but at some point in this episode, I'm gonna have to say the song title, Captain Save a Ho, out loud, so we might as well establish very low expectations. Shit, I just said it before I even had to say it.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  Are you familiar with the term loop-deed?

• 4:11Speaker 00

  Here, of course, we have Oakland, California's own Digital Underground with their 1990 dad rock staple, The Humpty Dance. I feel like I could convince you that The Humpty Dance is spiritually dad rock now. If only I had more time. Here, of course, we have almighty Digital Underground leader, Shock G, may he rest in peace. Here is Shock G in character as Humpty Hump, coining the term loop-deed while immediately defining it as a word that don't mean nothing. I'm so glad I could play the loop-deed part of The Humpty Dance, but also sneak in the part where Shock G says, "Both how I'm livin' and my nose is large," because I love the construction.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  I love the syntax of "both how I'm livin' and my nose is large" so much. I think about it all the time. I'm serious. Are you familiar with the term stiplificate?

• 5:22Speaker 00

  Here we have Pharoah Manch of the great Queens rap duo, Organized Confusion, on a track called Intro on Organized Confusion's self-titled 1991 debut album. Here we have Pharoah Manch casually coining the term stiplificate, a combination, a portmanteau of the words stipulate and pontificate. And this is indeed a fantastic made up word to describe Pharoah Manch's whole deal. Please also note that he's specifically stiplificating his hieroglyphic file, which, even if I'd never heard this song, if you just came up to me and were like, hey, did you hear about that rapper who stiplificated his hieroglyphic file?

• 6:07Speaker 00

  I'd be like, oh yeah, Pharoah Manch. It makes total sense to me that he would stiplificate that. Are you familiar with the term acniculus?

• 6:29Speaker 00

  Here we have EST of the great Philadelphia rap trio, Three Times Dope. That's pretty dope. This is a Three Times Dope song from 1988 called From the Giddy Up, in which EST casually, splendidly coins the term acniculus, which, near as I can tell, just means super awesome. Back in 2013, Complex magazine did a list of top 15 made up rap words, and stiplificate was ranked number 12, Wangsta by 50 Cent was number nine, loop-deed by Digital Underground was number eight, acniculus by Three Times Dope was number three, and the number one made up rap word, according to Complex, was ilmatic. Ilmatic, of course, is synonymous with nas, though initially, ilmatical was coined by

• 7:14Speaker 00

  the rapper Tragedy Kadafi in 1988. Not that you need or want me to stiplificate that, or I guess mansplain that. I got no beef with this Complex list, though with only 15 entries, it is by no means definitive on the subject of made up rap words. Are you familiar with the term floski-woski?

• 7:51Speaker 00

  Here we have Andre Benjamin, soon to be known as Andre 3000, he of the almighty Atlanta rap duo, OutKast, on the foundational 1998 OutKast classic, Rosa Parks. Floski-woski, I think of it as hyphenated. Floski-woski, I guess, just means bullshit. It means not acniculus. This business of made up words in pop songs is, of course, not exclusive to rappers. Just say the word, su-su-su-deo, but it's especially useful to rappers. I think it's fair to say that rappers are the best at making up words, and to me, this guy is the greatest word inventor in rap history. Are you familiar with the term?

• 8:38Speaker 00

  Flambo-stin.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  Flambo-stin. A combination, a portmanteau of the words flamboyant and bo-stin. His name is Earl Stevens. He is born in 1967 and raised in Vallejo, a city in northern California, in the North Bay, 25 miles north of Oakland. Earl is better known, he is internationally known and locally rightfully permanently deified. Earl is better known as E40, the rapper with the all-time best personal vocabulary, in my humble opinion and in his less humble opinion. This song from E40's 2000 album Loyalty and Betrayal is called, indeed, Flambo-stin.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  For shiggy-dy. E40's inimitable, irreplaceable, super yelpy, Saturday morning cartoon voice. E40's tendency to sound like Scooby-Doo when he gets super flambo-stful. Well, that's just one of a billion reasons why E40 is very possibly my favorite rapper of all time. E40, who's got more words for money than banks have got stacks of money. Cheese, gouda, fetti, chalupa, mail, as in checks. I actually really love mail. E40, who put out a whole EP in 1993 called The Mailman.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  E40, who is describing weed as broccoli way back in 1993, on a track from The Mailman EP called Practice Looking Hard, which samples Boots Riley from The Coup, Oakland rap legends The Coup. This song samples the great Boots Riley line, "I got a mirror in my pocket and I practice looking hard." Boots Riley's in this video as well. Love that guy. It would be very funny in the Practice Looking Hard video if E40 had held up a giant stalk of actual broccoli when he says, "Got me a baggie full of broccoli." But I do understand why he doesn't do that. The way in this video, E40 almost takes a sip of his beer, but then he stops because he has to keep rapping, is just phenomenal.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  Also, just his line delivery thereof, "I feel great. I'm mean muggin', but I feel great," also phenomenal. E40, who says he was definitely the first rapper to refer to the police as "the popos."

• 11:39Speaker 00

  From his 1992 full-length solo debut album, Federal, that's E40 on a song called Outsmart the Popos. I dig this song because the dinky little keyboard beat here sounds like the jingle my dryer makes when it finishes a cycle.

• 12:07Speaker 00

  "I'm not Bootsy" is also of vital importance here. You are familiar, yes, with Bootsy Collins, funk bass virtuoso, the pride of Cincinnati, Ohio, James Brown, P-funk, groove is in the heart. Did you know that in 2004, Bootsy Collins and Fatboy Slim covered "The Joker" by the Steve Miller Band? I swear to you, I didn't plan this, but yeah, dude, this is happening.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  Of course, that's Bootsy Collins on vocals as well, and I really, truly dig the tenderness, the understated deftness, the, dare I say, pismotality with which Bootsy Collins speaks of the pompous of love, whilst also, as usual, playing the raddest, brashest bass guitar you're ever gonna hear in your life. Bootsy Collins with a star-shaped bass, with the star-shaped sunglasses, with a giant, glorious, gaudy top hat, et cetera. Bootsy Collins, the walking, living, breathing embodiment of flambo-stin. The E40 slang term "bootsy" is a reference to, a tribute to Bootsy Collins, but when

• 13:36Speaker 00

  E40 says "bootsy," it's a pejorative. Talking to Genius in 2016 for a piece headlined "The Definitive Guide to E40's Slang," E40 says, quote, "Bootsy comes from the streets of Oakland. The only one who can be Bootsy and get away with it is the legendary Bootsy Collins." He says, "When you're doing too much, you hella bootsy. You could never disrespect the real Bootsy. We're just saying, let Bootsy be him, but if you're trying to be like him, you're doing hella extra," end quote. Notably, Bootsy Collins spells his name B-O-O-T-S-Y, while the E40 song, and insult,

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Bootsy is officially spelled B-O-O-T-S-E-E, because you're doing too much.

• 14:35Speaker 00

  From his 1995 platinum-selling album, In a Major Way, that is just the first 10 seconds of the E40 song Bootsy, and it is indeed tremendously helpful that E40 devotes a full song to a slang term, but first defines that term immediately. I love it when people do that, like when TLC defined scrub immediately on the song, no scrubs. But yeah, the helpfulness, the utility of E40 defining Bootsy immediately is undercut by the fact that E40 defines Bootsy while rapping in ultra-turbo mode. E40 is rapping at ludicrous speed, and once you start rapping at ludicrous speed, it's very difficult to stop. "We can't stop.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  We have to slow down first." E40 is aware that he quite often raps faster than most people can think, but that, in E40's not-humble opinion, is very much a you problem.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  "I ain't rapping too fast, see, y'all just listening too slow." Unbelievable. That song, also from E40's 2000 album Loyalty and Betrayal, is called "To Whom This May Concern." And yes, these lines specifically concern the hip-hop quotable section of famed hip-hop bible, The Source, a feature in the magazine that indeed celebrated the most quotable, the most inventive and hilarious and impactful lyrics in hip-hop that month. But E40 has never appeared in the hip-hop quotable section of The Source, which kinda irks him. E40 is one of the most beloved and influential and prolific and delightful and innovative rappers in Bay Area history.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  You drive around the Bay Area, you turn on the radio, you pay any attention to the music blasting out of any other car on the road, and you will hear E40's voice everywhere, both via actual E40 songs and via the songs of countless other beloved Bay Area rappers who proudly bear E40's influence. Are you familiar with the term "Shaboo b'la boopie"?

• 17:07Speaker 00

  My goodness gracious, that is Oakland rapper and fellow Bay Area deity, Mistah Fab, M-I-S-T-A-H-F period A period B period. Mistah Fab, with a 2005 song called "Don't Know," in which he enters "Shaboo b'la boopie" into the Oakland-based, loop-de-looped extended universe of excellent words and rap songs that don't mean nothing. But notice that "Shaboo b'la boopie" rhymes with "I don't know you Bootsy." Mistah Fab and E40 are frequent collaborators and confidants, but whether you're close buddies with E40 or not, as an aspiring rapper, you are living in E40's universe.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  You are sampling liberally from E40's extensive proprietary vocabulary, whether you know it or not, and whether you like it or not. Because while he is an internationally known rap star, E40 is still not quite as beloved as he ought to be outside the Bay Area. His influence and his genius are often insufficiently acknowledged outside the Bay Area. E40 fans bring up this lack of respect a lot. E40 himself brings up this lack of respect a lot. In fact, he brings up this lack of respect on one of the weirdest, but also biggest hits he ever had.

• 18:47Speaker 00

  My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 56th episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Cole and the 2000s, and this week, we are discussing "Tell Me When to Go" by E40, from his 2006 album, My Ghetto Report Card. This should have been the 40th episode. I'm aware of that. "Yes, I'm from the Bay where we hyphy and go dumb, from the soil where them rappers be getting they lingo from." Ooh, the astute amongst you may notice that the chorus to "Tell Me When to Go" samples lavishly from the 1986 Run DMC classic, "Dumb Girl."

• 19:35Speaker 00

  That's pretty rude, guys. That's not terribly progressive of Run DMC, I suppose, and "dumb with a capital D" is definitely ruder and dumber than "dumb with a lowercase d," but Run DMC are Run DMC, so we trust their judgment. Absolutely. Let it also be known that E40 is not the first Bay Area luminary to sample Run DMC's "Dumb Girl." Please, Hammer, don't hurt him.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  Ow, ow, ow. Here we have Oakland legend MC Hammer holding forth on his modest 1988 hit, Turn This Mother Out. The line there, yo, he ain't from New York, so don't even play him. Much like E40 being disrespected by national music magazines, MC Hammer in 1988 is being disrespected by out of town radio stations, which irks him. In 1990, MC Hammer puts out a song called You Can't Touch This, which solves most of his current problems, but introduces a whole bunch of new problems. Congratulations, or I'm sorry, that happened.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  More importantly, the easiest, crudest, broadest way to explain the evolution of Bay Area rap is that in 1988, a big MC Hammer song goes dumb once. Whereas in 2006, a big E40 song goes dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, ad break.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  For shiggy, all right. I lived in Oakland, California from 2003 to 2006, and I loved it there. I'm not going to do that again. And in that three year span, I heard this song on Bay Area radio approximately eight billion times.

• 21:40Speaker 00

  Here we have The Federation, a rap crew from Fairfield, California, a town about 40 miles northeast of Oakland and 17 miles northeast of Vallejo. Here we have The Federation with their 2003 breakout song called Hyphy, H-Y-P-H-Y, a portmanteau of hyper and fly. Maybe in 2003, you've already known for years what the word hyphy means, what the word hyphy embodies. And maybe you don't know. Perhaps you are simply entranced by the raw percussive ardor of this dude's voice. This is Stressmatic, one of the three rappers in The Federation. Perhaps you are simply entranced by the soothing, ultra violent hypnosis with which Stressmatic raps,

• 22:25Speaker 00

  strapped tucked in, vest tucked in, clip tucked in, hyphy, amid the vertigo inducing rainbow death spiral of that little keyboard beat in the background.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  That's Dooney Baby of The Federation, charismatically rhyming your product in the bush with your gun in the bush, with your fatty in the bush. Also, Dooney Baby says, hyphy, the same way the South get crunk. So, hyphy circa 2003 is a Bay Area specific musical and cultural movement animated by mindless, ecstatic, raucous, hedonistic, perhaps substance induced partying and dancing and driving. This is a car heavy environment. In Oakland especially, there are technically illegal, but spiritually vital, street races and spontaneous stunt filled, street takeovers called sideshows. Where one might, as E40 puts it, ride sideways.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  And all of this, musically and culturally, hyphy is running parallel to and also frequently intersecting with our friend Lil Jon's mid 2000s mainstream crunk empire way over in Atlanta. That's way too many words to imperfectly attempt to define hyphy. This is not a hieroglyphic you need me to stiplificate. You want a four word description of hyphy?

• 24:14Speaker 00

  Yay, that's Goldie Gold of The Federation. I really dig the way Goldie Gold is barking the whole time, including during the gently fluid, internal rhyme alliteration of grown man gulping on a cup full of burgundy. Meanwhile, get a load of Rick Rock, The Federation's full time in-house producer, who provides the boom, boom, boom, boom, and so forth. In 2004, The Federation released their full length debut album, Federation: The Album, and I buy it, of course, because I want to listen to this song hyphy another eight billion times, even when it's not on the radio. And also, I love this song called Go Dumb, where Rick Rock's beat goes.

• 25:11Speaker 00

  I love that song so much, even if I'm always tempted to go.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  And then I feel like I'm going to pass out. Although, passing out while listening to a song called Go Dumb is maybe the closest I'll ever get to a genuine hyphy adjacent experience. I lived in Oakland from 2003 to 2006. I arrived far too late, my mid twenties, to even pretend to claim the city as my own. And I did not stay nearly long enough to even pretend to claim any tenuous, retroactive authority. Plus, I was a white midwesterner. So, when I lived in Oakland, I was perfectly content to just be a dazed, grateful, awestruck outsider. And in those three years, which I experienced largely as a three year perpetual traffic jam

• 26:04Speaker 00

  that I mostly didn't mind sitting in, I spent those three years listening, not exclusively, but primarily to Bay Area radio. And they're mostly KMEL, 106.1, the Bay Area's number one for hip hop and R&B. And no post teenage musical span of my life looms larger for me. The way the gargantuan, breathtaking vistas of Northern California mixed with the gargantuan radness and weirdness of Bay Area rap radio. And no song encapsulates that time for me more than Hyphy by The Federation. At first, I thought this guy was rapping too fast,

• 26:48Speaker 00

  but no, I was just listening too slow.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  We can't stop. Dig the wanton acniculousness of E40 rapping on hyphy. Got the business mind of a stockbroker and the mouthpiece of a car salesman is a fantastic encapsulation of E40's whole deal. But then again, so is getting our yaper on. Yaper means money, paper, fatty, gouda, chalupa. E40 is a fantastic and ungodly colossal discography. This year, 2026, E40 put out a quadruple album called Turning My Money Over. Money is another word for yaper. But of course, this guy has been talking up

• 27:52Speaker 00

  his luxurious lifestyle for a long, long, long time.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  Here we have the Vallejo Group MVP, which stands for Most Valuable Players. Don't overthink it. On a succulent slow jam called I Thought I Could Trust A Girl, which can be found on their 1988 debut EP called The Kingsmen. Yes, that's a young E40 purring luxury in my two story home like a West Coast LL Cool J. E40 will not sound like this for very long. The Kingsmen consist of E40, his brother, Donnell Stevens, aka D-Shot, his sister, Tanina Stevens, aka Sugati, and his cousin, Brant Jones, aka Be Legit. E40, Be Legit, D-Shot, and Sugati soon rename themselves The Click

• 28:50Speaker 00

  and release an EP called Let's Side in 1990. You can basically hear in real time, E40 deciding to start rapping faster than anyone else can think and maybe never stop.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  This song is called Face The Facts, and the ludicrous speed is vital there, of course. But so is the tremendous sauce E40 puts on. Some of you punk ass suckers might not want to admit it. The electric personality of this guy, the gleeful eccentricity, and yes, the radiant flamboyance. In fact, in 1991, E40 makes his solo debut on an EP called Mr. Flamboyant. Here is the song, Mr. Flamboyant. The most important word here is Nathan.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  I mean no disrespect to extra mannish, which is a truly fantastic and self explanatory E40-ism. But no, I'm really into Nathan, which means nothing. That's it. I am enraptured by the audacity of coining a new slang term for nothing that also starts with N and has two syllables and six letters. Saying Nathan instead of nothing has no immediate structural poetic utility. It doesn't fit any better in a line. It's the same syllable pattern. No, the appeal of Nathan is that it's just cooler. As a youngster, I never knew nothing. Fine, normal, relatable, but pedestrian.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  As a youngster, I never knew Nathan. Intriguing, exotic, pleasingly briefly confusing, insulting to guys named Nathan, but they'll get over it. There's this great book from 2009 called How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-Hop MC, where a scholar named Paul Edwards interviews more than 100 famous rappers about their writing process, their imagery, their flow, their breath control, freestyling, et cetera. And E40 talks about his slang and he says, quote, "Everybody want to hear a little razzle-dazzle. They want to hear something slick. They want to hear new words. The world revolves

• 31:32Speaker 00

  around slang, whether it's corny slang or hip slang from the hood," end quote. The word Sahab, for example.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  In 1992, The Click put out a phenomenal album called Down and Dirty. This song is called "Mic Check." First of all, that's Be Legit, also of The Click, rapping at the very end there, taking a slow beat and busting a slow rhyme. Be Legit is indeed a slower, slurrer, grimier, more grounded presence. And he's a fantastic counterpoint when E40 is in full yelping Saturday morning cartoon mode. The Click, as a quartet, as a family, as a durable unit, The Click are quietly, excellently balanced while also primarily serving as an E40 delivery system. And so here, E40 just casually drops in, "What's up, Sahab?"

• 32:41Speaker 00

  Sahab means friend, specifically in E40's own hillside neighborhood in Vallejo. Talking to Genius in 2016, E40 says, quote, "My wife's friend is Egyptian. I asked her what's another word for friend. She said Sahib. I didn't know how to spell it out in Arabic, so we spelled it how we spelled it, S-A-H-O-B, and it became a hillside word. It actually wasn't an all-the-way Vallejo word. It was mostly our side of town. We was like, 'That's my Sahab, my friend. You feel me?' The other side of town would say Cuddy," end quote. E40 says, "You feel me" a lot as well, or even better, "You smell me."

• 33:26Speaker 00

  Also, yeah, E40 has been happily married to his high school sweetheart, Tracy Stevens, for 35 years. It's the sweetest possible thing. This Click album, Down and Dirty, will be reissued a few years later in 1995 by the major label Jive Records. But my favorite song on Down and Dirty is from the original 1992 independent version, and it's a legitimately furious anti-police brutality revenge anthem called "You Fucked Up When You Slammed My Mother." And I love the way D-Shot from The Click can go from barking that title over and over to rapping the word Sahab with sublime menace.

• 34:28Speaker 00

  D-Shot is a sharper and harsher and more forceful presence in The Click, and he too is absolutely necessary. Do people want to hear new words? Do you agree with E40 that people, that rap fans, that listeners, want to hear new words? New slang? Pop music, rap music, whatever. I think a lot about how the structure of a hit song very rarely changes. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, maybe a bridge, verse, chorus, et cetera. E40 adheres to all of that. Basically, too much deviation is unnatural, unexpected, displeasing. In pop music, rap music, whatever, true greatness and legitimate innovation depends

• 35:13Speaker 00

  on a very specific combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar. People want to hear new words, but not too many new words at a time. In 1992, E40 releases his debut full-length solo album called Federal, which includes a song called Carlos Rossi, which is about how much E40 loves wine.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  You have to admit that "it's hexa-satisfying" is an awfully satisfying way to describe budget wine. This solo E40 album, Federal, will also be reissued by Jive Records a few years later. But from virtually the beginning, starting in 1989, all of E40's projects are first released on his own label, Sick Witted Records. There will be, throughout E40's spectacularly voluminous and ongoing career, some crossover with major labels, plenty of spikes of mainstream attention. But as with Too Short in Oakland, famously selling his tapes out of the trunk of his

• 36:23Speaker 00

  car, E40 is foundationally a proudly independent, a self-sufficient artist, an empire builder. No offense to Carlos Rossi, but E40 now has his own flourishing wine brand, Earl Stevens' Selections. I'm not a wine expert, but I can nonetheless confidently recommend the Earl Stevens' Sluricane, because that sounds awesome. E40 is a rapper, as a mogul, as a brand. E40 is not building towards some mythic pop crossover anointed by the masses moment that will pay off all this hard work. The payoff is immediate and constant and unending.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  Every song, every album, every double album, every quadruple album is the payoff. And so, with no need to compromise for the sake of outside attention, even E40's biggest, most memorable, most nationally resonant hit songs retain a delightful regional eccentricity, a refusal to conform in all respects. And so here, returning to E40's 1993 EP, The Mailman, for the second and I assure you final time, I will say out loud the song title, Captain Save-A-Ho.

• 37:57Speaker 00

  If you're wondering who's the titular captain in this video, it's the guy who's got a giant C on his shirt and he's wearing a cape and he's spinning around in a phone booth. So, look, this is awfully uncouth, in addition to being objectively ridiculous, and let's not have this particular person, me, linger on this particular song in this particular venue. But if you hear this song even once, you will never forget it. You will never forget that title, and you will never forget Sugati going, "I wanna be saved," as long as you live. And that's like 95% of the point of making rap music, no? To be singular and unforgettable and unignorable.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  And the other 5% is to try to be as flamboyantly uncouth as possible. If you do find yourself listening to that song in its entirety, I'm not saying the title again, note the crawling syrupy tempo, the scraping bass-heavy oozing ominousness, the slang-heavy lyrical ultra-grittiness, all of which exemplifies the Bay Area rap subgenre of mob music, two Bs in mob. Mob music, a style synonymous in the 90s and early 2000s with E40 and also Too Short, Drew Down, Mac Mall, Richie Rich, et cetera. In my experience, Bay Area rap is the most baffling and exhilarating deep-dive listening experience imaginable.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  Go have fun. I insist. Meanwhile, Sugati, E40's sister and bandmate in The Click, Sugati is the best and most flamboyant part of this song as well.

• 39:48Speaker 00

  This song is called "Sprinkle Me." She raps too on this song, but Sugati, in giant hoop earrings, casually vibing in the video and super cheerfully going, "You know I ain't right," that is for sure the best part of this. The E40 song that melodically speaking, you are most likely to get stuck in your head for 48 hours. "Sprinkle Me" appears on E40's 1995 album, In a Major Way, which features noted Digital Underground alumnus Tupac Shakur on a song called "Dusted and Disgusted." That is another uncouth E40 phrase. "In a Major Way" is E40's commercial breakthrough. It peaks at number 13 on the Billboard album chart and goes platinum, selling a million

• 40:32Speaker 00

  copies in the US. Also, later in 1995, The Click also released a full album called Game Related. And then he just keeps going. You can rely on E40 for a solo album, a solo double album, or a Click album, or at the very least, E40 will help curate a compilation double album every year from 1995 to 2003. And then in 2010, he starts firing off staggered-release quadruple albums. And listen, usually my inclination, my compulsion, is to play like two songs from every album in someone's discography, no matter what, but E40's spectacular voluminousness makes this approach implausible.

• 41:17Speaker 00

  We gotta pick our shots here, and this is mine.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  My current favorite E40 song is called Earl That's Your Life. From his 1999 album, Charlie Hustle, colon, "The Portrait of a Self-Made Millionaire." Listen to that bassline, dude. Luxuriate in that bassline. Submerge yourself in the champagne bubble bath of that bassline. This is like G-Funk for people who can't stand the Dodgers. This song is Bootsy in the positive sense. Get a load of E40 going, "ch-ch-ch." You know what that is? Sucker repellent. Holy shit. We got the Oakland R&B duo Otis and Shug on the ungodly gorgeous backup vocals in the chorus here.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  Earl That's Your Life has a triumphant, valedictory, ascending-to-heaven magnificence to it. Despite E40 literally rapping about how he'll probably never see the pearly gates. If you don't want a champagne bubble bath, then fill your tub with slurracane if you so desire.

• 43:07Speaker 00

  Earl That's Your Life feels like E40's my way. It feels like it's championship parade. But maybe to somebody else, it's just yet another great E40 song on yet another great E40 album. E40 is a master of consistency, of unflagging excellence, of overwhelming volume that paradoxically makes E40 easier to take for granted, easier to underrate, especially for those of us not fortunate enough to live in the Bay Area. In 2002, on his album, The Politician, "Grind and Grind," yes, that's what I said, "The Politician." This particular excellent E40 album begins with a song called "Why They Don't Fuck With Us."

• 43:51Speaker 00

  That's sort of half question and half answer.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  "Everybody Wanna Use My Slang" is a core E40 grievance. For years, potentially for decades now, E40 has been threatening to publish an official book of slang. Talking to the Associated Press in 2023, E40 says, quote, "If I do the book of slang, it's going to hurt people's feelings because they think that their favorite rapper made the words up and it came from me." Then he says, "I've been around for more than half a century. I know all this. I've got receipts to back it up." He says, "I was the first rapper screaming tycoon. That's one of many. Slappin', choppers, I've got so many of them." End quote.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  Hey, remember in 2016 when Dram and Lil Yachty put out that hit song "Broccoli" where they invented the whimsical slang term broccoli? No, they didn't. They didn't invent that. Knock it off. Such is E40's lot in life. Although occasionally, a rapper who is not E40 coins a brilliant and super influential new slang word.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  Here we have Keek De Sneak, he of the great Oakland rap group Three Times Crazy, K-E-A-K, Keek De Sneak. From his 1999 debut solo album Sneak-a-Sidle, this song is called "High Tech." Did you get all that lyrically? No, you didn't. Keek De Sneak is not a "did you get all that?" type rapper. Just let it wash over you, or I suppose let it pummel you. Listening to this guy is like getting caught in a champagne hailstorm. But perhaps you caught the three-word phrase "feelin' hella hyphy." Talking to Complex magazine in 2016 for a hyphy oral history, Keek De Sneak says, quote, "In the seventh grade, I wanted to rap. So me and a lot of my friends would freestyle and scheme on how to get in the game.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  I was a character back in junior high school, a class clown. I used to make everybody laugh. The word hyphy came about because I used to eat a lot of candy. I was thinking hyper, like when a kid eat a lot of candy and they can't be still and they just running around." End quote. There was a brief period when hyphy was a new iteration of Bootsy. Bootsy in the negative, trying to do too much sense. In that Complex piece, Oakland rapper Mr. Fab says, quote, "What people don't understand is hyphy in the streets of Oakland at first wasn't a good thing. Like, if you were hyphy, that wasn't cool.

• 46:58Speaker 00

  People would be like, man, that dude's too hyphy. Why you dealing with him? So we turned it into something that was accepted by the masses. And then it became the cool thing to be." End quote. And so here is Keek De Sneak in 2005.

• 47:33Speaker 00

  Here we have Keek De Sneak with his 2005 regional smash hit "Super Hyphy", in which slang-wise, Keek lays claim to hyphy and what it do and foshizi and perhaps also yadda the mean. Sure, "I don't think they know that's my word" is a core Keek De Sneak grievance. I also heard this song eight billion times on Bay Area radio, on KMEL, and I reveled genuinely in living in a place where a song as flagrantly bizarre as "Super Hyphy" could be a huge radio hit. That a rapper with that voice could be a huge popular rapper, a voice like a robot dinosaur with pneumonia,

• 48:15Speaker 00

  a voice like when those scientists digitally reconstructed the vocal cords of a 3,000-year-old mummy. I dig Keek De Sneak very much, and I dig him all the more for his brazen improbability. Same with this guy.

• 48:45Speaker 00

  "I'm sicker than SARS and I'm flyer than Mars." Here we have beloved immortal Vallejo rapper Mac Dre with his regional smash hit "Feelin' Myself" from his 2004 album Ronald Dragan, colon, "Dragonomics", which was his ninth album. Mac Dre turned 34 years old in 2004. And with my outsider Midwestern frame of reference with "Feelin' Myself", yet another "I heard this on KMEL eight million times" situation. With "Feelin' Myself," at first, I thought a lot about Eminem, about malevolent cartoonish whimsy. "Hi, kids, do you like violence?" That sort of thing. Mac Dre had another big song from 2002 called "Thizzle Dance" from his Thizelle Washington album.

• 49:30Speaker 00

  I really dig the presidential theme he's got going. But see, often, the thizzle dance is the dance you do and the thiz face is the scrunched-up face you make when you're on MDMA. Either that, or someone just farted and you just smelled it. Meanwhile, the chorus to "Thizzle Dance" sounds like it's performed by the non-human cast of Sesame Street.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  Even the goofball, monster mash spookiness of the little doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo riff there contributes to my sense that Mac Dre exemplifies both the silliness and the deadly seriousness of the hyphy era. Mac Dre was shot and killed on November 1st, 2004 in a still unsolved murder after a show in Kansas City, Missouri. He was 34. So how bizarre to hear "Feelin' Myself" on Bay Area radio every half hour in the mid 2000s because you can revel in the seedy frivolity of that song while also clearly hearing that song now as a eulogy, as a lament, as a tribute,

• 50:53Speaker 00

  as a tragedy, as a paradoxical sort of arms-length embrace. I'm living in the Bay Area, but I'm still emphatically an outsider here. Loving the songs and learning the slang or whatever does not make you any less of an outsider. Hyphy as a sound and as a vibe is bewildering on first contact and only very slightly more graspable once you start to mistakenly believe that you understand it. Listen, man, I would just picture a suburban teenager back in Ohio, eagerly trying and failing to make any sense of this.

• 51:40Speaker 00

  And so here we have Keek to Sneak and E40, trading off lines in sumptuous black and white in the abandoned 16th Street train station in Oakland. A space that feels cavernous, but somehow opulent, like a hastily abandoned Louvre. "Tell Me When to Go" is the lead single off E40's 2006 album, My Ghetto Report Card. His second album to sell a million copies in America, to go platinum. My Ghetto Report Card peaks at number three on the Billboard Album Chart, a career high for E40. And this album is simultaneously proudly emphatically local. It's full of features from Bay Area superstars like Two Shorts and The Federation and Turf Talk.

• 52:25Speaker 00

  But there's a ton of national outreach as well, a lot of coalition building with UGK, 8-Ball, Jual Santana, T-Pain. Your producer on "Tell Me When to Go" is one Lil Jon, mainstream beloved crunk superstar, which makes this song in 2006, a precise combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar. And even if you've been listening to his voice for 15-plus years at this point, E40's voice will be permanently, magnificently unfamiliar.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Ooh, Jesus Christ had dreads, so shake 'em. I ain't got none, but I'm planning on growing some. Imagine all the Hebrews who are dancin' on top of chariots and turning tight ones.

• 53:09Speaker 00

  "Jesus Christ had dreads, so shake 'em" is a not-so-quietly phenomenal opening line. First of all, Lil Jon's beat here is also not-so-quietly phenomenal. The gargantuan minimalism of it. The little squiggly digital bing amid the concussive bass. Slang-wise, going dumb is self-explanatory. Turning tight ones is self-explanatory. Dancing on top of chariots is fairly self-explanatory. So by 2006, hyphy is an explosive Bay Area movement with at least the potential to become a breakout national mainstream phenomenon with E40 as the focal point, the spokesman, the ambassador, per the title of a song on E40's next album,

• 53:52Speaker 00

  released in 2008 and called "The Ball Street Journal." Incredible. And so hyphy gets a ton of local press where E40 carefully explains this phenomenon without taking all the credit for it because E40 knows what it's like to not get credit for stuff. Talking to the San Francisco Chronicle in March 2006, he's careful to credit Keek to Sneak for inventing the term hyphy back in the 90s. And then E40 says, quote, "Now it's a movement. It's a culture. It's the way we talk. It's super flambosta. It's really just stunting to the utmost degree. It's showboating and showcasing. It's wardrobe. It's however you're feeling. It's energy.

• 54:37Speaker 00

  It's a dance. Several different phases of it. You dig? It's cars. It's showing off. It's whatever. It's hyphy." End quote. All of this excitement may also require ingesting something just to ease his thoughts.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Doctor Green Thumb lips just to ease my thoughts. Not just the cops, but the homies you gotta watch. The moon is full, look at the dark clouds. Sitting in my scraper watching Oakland going wild, ta-da.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  And what kills me right there is yet again, the collision of the familiar and the unfamiliar. The direct logical path from "the moon is full, look at the dark clouds" to "sitting in my scraper watching Oakland going wild, ta-da." The immediate perspective shift from the sky to the street. Hyphy does not blow up nationally. That is not surprising to you. That is not surprising to anyone. Hyphy is too defiantly odd and secretly complex and exultantly local to translate to the masses who live in different places with different breathtaking vistas or no breathtaking vistas whatsoever. But E40 has never been and will never be pinned to one song,

• 55:47Speaker 00

  one moment, one style. And anyway, strictly as a matter of public safety, I don't think you want every susceptible teenager in America getting into hyphy. Are you familiar with the term "ghost ride the whip"?

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Now let me direct traffic for a minute. Let me tell y'all about this hyphy movement we got going in the back. When I say something, you say it right back at me. You see, we're gonna do it like this here. Ghost ride the whip, ghost ride the whip, ghost ride the whip, ghost ride the whip. Now scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  "Tell Me When to Go" ends with E40 directing traffic, doing a little call and response and providing for the uninitiated a vocabulary list. Stunishades, thiz-face, et cetera. And as evidenced by the video, the really genuinely beautiful video with the classical gravity of a work of art in the Louvre and the raw energy of a sideshow in the parking lots outside the Louvre. As evidenced by the "Tell Me When to Go" video, ghost riding the whip is when you get out of your moving car and dance alongside it or on top of it while it's still moving. Don't do that, though. Do not ghost ride the whip. It is enough to know what ghost ride the whip means

• 57:04Speaker 00

  and to watch other people ghost ride the whip. And most importantly, to exalt in the way E40 says, "ghost ride the whip." This sort of acniculousness is best enjoyed vicariously.

• 57:22Speaker 00

  We are thrilled and relieved to welcome back our dear friend Logan Murdock, staff writer at The Ringer, co-host of The Real Ones Podcast. Still a Raiders fan despite them not being in Oakland because he has integrity, Bay Area luminary and ambassador. Logan, welcome back and bless you for being here.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  I'm riding city to city, me and Harvilly. So get your toilet paper because it's gonna get shitty.

• 57:45Speaker 00

  There we go. It's off the dome. Maybe that was, I don't know. Okay, with E40, we've been talking about doing this for years. We're both very excited. We have too much to go through. I do think with an artist as voluminous as E40, it's important to start off, like, what was your first exposure to this person? What was your first E40 album, the first song? Like, when did you get on board with this guy exactly?

• 58:10Speaker 01

  I believe I was two years old. I can't remember if it was on my dad's Kenwood or if it was my mama had some playing on her speakers, but I do remember the famous story in my household is that "Sprinkle Me" was getting played. But as a two-year-old, I would say "Pinkle Me." And that was, that was my first exposure to E40 as a rapper. And then obviously, like, you know, we heard the Captain Save a Hose all the time. You know, anytime you're on Cameo, anytime you heard Cameo, you heard "Sprinkle Me", you heard all, everything that Chuy Gomez wanted to play, Million Dollar Spot was on. That was a big thing that we were listening to. And then the other thing, like, E40 was such a big part of my life, not only just the music, but like, whenever I would listen to Cameo,

• 58:54Speaker 01

  there would be ads for the Ambassador's Lounge. And then my dad would be like, would be trying to make plans in his head that he's going to go to the Ambassador's Lounge without actual childcare in, in hand, which meant that I was just chilling at the house on some, on Friday and Saturday nights while he went to the Ambassador's Lounge or Sweet Jimmy's or, or Kimball's Carnival. I don't know if I'm ringing a bell for you, but these are the spots that you would hear E40. But he was just such a big part of my life. And then, you know, like, to, to get to meet him and then actually like, kind of know him now is kind of, is, is kind of a surreal thing. But he's always been a constant presence in my life. And honestly, a lot of, it was like, it was one of the first pair of social relationships I had in my life

• 59:37Speaker 01

  was listening to E40 and like, seeing him around. Because he had like, he's, he had second and third and fourth and fifth wins. And I'm sure, we're obviously gonna get to talk about all of them. But at every stage of my life, there is an E40 story or an E40 appearance, going to Summer Jam and seeing him. But also not even just, not necessarily him being on the bill, but somebody coming into town and bringing E40 out at the Colosseum. Same with Too Short. You know, you kind of, it was like, the first check-in at a bay is like, if you're gonna come here, you are gonna have to give E40 or Too Short five minutes of your set. That's, that's actually what's going to happen here, right? So you would always see him everywhere. And, you know, it's, it's, it's really dope to like, have somebody that's that omnipresent

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  and give you so much game, which I'm happy to discuss at this point.

• 1:00:26Speaker 00

  "Pinkle Me" as a two-year-old, that's such a beautiful image right there. That's really, really delightful. And yes, the Ambassador's Lounge should have had like childcare. There should have been like a room where they could just put you in and you could watch TV or whatever.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  I'd imagine for some people, there was childcare. I would imagine some people did watch out there.

• 1:00:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, right, right. Some people just improvised that, totally, totally. I'm curious how you would describe E40's sound. As you say, he's had like a second, third, a fifth, a fourth win. He's been doing this since the late 80s. He was a huge star way before Hifey. He's been a huge star long after Hifey. Like, do you think of E40 as having a consistent, reliable sound? Or is the whole point of E40 that he's super fluid? And he sort of changes with the times and changes the times without it ever sounding, you know, trendy or whatever?

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  I think it's a little bit of both, right? Because he comes into the game like in the late 80s and he basically brings to consciousness mob music, right? And that's heavy bass, it's a slower tempo. And it's basically gonna knock all of your speakers out of commission, right? If you don't have like, if you don't have, if you don't have, if you have factory speakers, it's, they're gonna be done by the end of the year.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  You don't anymore.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  By the car.

• 1:01:40Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  You do not, right? And so it's that, it's more of a gritty type of feel. And then, you know, when he has his second win in the 2000s, it's not his second, that's probably his fifth win by the time we get to Hifey, right? But by the time we get to Hifey, but let's just, I don't want this to get the wrong way, but Hifey, he's basically coming into Hifey's world and basically just rapping his E40-ism in a Hifey universe. But I think post that, it's basically, you're coming into E40's world and you're just gonna rap your ass off with E40, right? Like Busta Rhymes has a track on E40's latest record. And it's basically them trading jabs.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  It's funny because they're both, Busta Rhymes, you can make the case, it's like the East Coast E40 and the West Coast E40 is E40, right? And they're coming together, but you're basically going into E40's world and it's incredible. And that's something that we're kind of missing in hip hop is a lot of world building. But that's what you get from the back stretch of E40's career, right? Where, you know, he has Function, but he's also has I Don't Fuck With You. And basically, he makes a decision on I Don't Fuck With You with Big Sean to say, no, this is my record for the last two months. Like, I'm going to, I am taking your record and that's what it's going to be. But I think more than anything, it's what we're gonna talk about is what you see, the biggest impact is the influence that he has on the current generation of West Coast rappers and how much they revere him.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  But also in the way that they copy him, right? And I think that's the biggest impact. But when it comes to sound, I will put it to mob music, which is really carries throughout the 90s. And then like, you know, he starts to get a little bit up tempo throughout the 2000s and then Hifey just explodes, which is, his version of Hifey is Hifey and Crunk basically making a baby. And he rides that for the next five years. But then, you know, it's interesting because the kids, which is my generation, the kids of Hifey have their coming of age in the 2010s. And then you get songs like Function, right? Like HBK basically is just taking the torch, a lot of PLO beats, you know?

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  And then you have like Kamaya, who has her Renaissance, right? And then she's produced by Trackademics, who made one of the most famous Tell Me When to Go remix that they still play to this day, right? But you have this education and you have basically us, who are basically 40's nieces and nephews kind of carrying the torch, but also kind of making their own with it, right? And so now he's just, 40 is just minted. He's just, he's a walking monument at this point. But a lot of that has to do with the fact that he can both make his own sound. Cause like, he still goes to the mob music canon all the time, right? Like, he has a joint with Turf Talk from a couple of years ago that's just, just crazy beats. And they're just gassing shit.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  Like, they're just, they're rapping in a way that you don't hear rap anymore. And like, the flourishes, all of the things, he still can go to that bag, but he can also go on your track and kick your ass, right? And then, and then have a verse on a diamond record and I Don't Fuck With You. Cause that's just what he does because he's so unique. And so he's one of the most unique, if not the most unique rapper that has ever crossed the planet. Like, I can't think of another, I mean, you know, obviously there's guys, Pimp C, there's, you know, we got real reverence for UGK, OutKast, right? In terms of uniqueness. But in terms of like a singular planet, like 40 is ill with it.

• 1:05:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I wanted to, sort of leading up to Hifey, sort of talk about E40 specifically in the 90s, that era, you know? In a major way in 95 is still, it's his first breakthrough album, still one of his most beloved albums. He's collaborating with Tupac, with Lil Wayne, Cash Money, with Fat Joe. Like, do you hear E40 in the 90s as a very distinct, specific thing that's separate from Hifey and then everything after?

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, we didn't really, we'll get to Hifey in a second, but we also gotta do some like, let's go back for a little bit, right? Because you talk about Inter Major Way, but in the early 90s, but what is right before Inter Major Way is he signs this huge independent, huge partnership with Jive Records, right? And it's not like the Jive, the Jive Records contract that UGK had, which was like a standard, like, and they've talked about it, how bad that deal was, like a standard, like, we're gonna take all of your publishing. We're gonna do everything, right? He comes in as a partnership, and this is also around a time where like Cash Money is getting their stuff, right? And he's getting their partnership with Universal.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  And Master P is getting, you know, and Master P, by the way, who got his game from St. Charles, who was E40's uncle. And really was told about ownership and owning your masters at a very, very early time in your career, right? So when, before the Jive deal, Captain Save A Ho was going crazy. I was just with my mom like earlier today and she was talking about how my pops used to listen, turn up the, the, turn up the big screen when Captain Save A Ho came on MTV drops. Like, it would just turn it up, like, we're gonna listen to this for a bit, right? But that, that is predates in a major way, in a lot of ways, right? I mean, that, he still was a buzz.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  He was talking, 40 was talking about how he already had the cards that had all, had all the platinum records before he got to Inter Major Way.

• 1:07:16Speaker 00

  He didn't need any of it, yeah.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  He didn't need it, but you know, he did the distribution model and to get on the Billboard charts was a different thing for him. That's something that he wanted to do. So by the time he gets to Inter Major Way, he is a seasoned artist, right? And you see that in the depth of the songs and the songwriting, right? And not only that, but the skits and, you know, songs like Dustin' and Disgusted with Pac, which is just, it's funny because he has two major songs with Pac. He has Dustin' and Disgusted, he has Million Dollar Spot. Million Dollar Spot is Death Row Records Pac, it's polished Pac. But this is like Tupacalypso Now Pac, Me Against the World Pac on Dustin' and Disgusted, right?

• 1:07:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  Digital Underground Pac on this, on this version, right? He also has, like, he has Sideways would be legit, that is just, oh my goodness, right? And he has so many of these records and it, and it, he releases his first major label album, it goes 13 on the Billboard charts in 1995, right? Like, it is a, he is very much out of the trunk in that mindset, but he's still getting Billboard appeal, right? So you see that also, he's kind of like his first wind as a celebrity, right? Because he's also on the Jamie Foxx show, right? He's also in the 90s, is also on a great, a great movie, one of my favorite movies of all time.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  That's not really, it's hard to find on streaming, but I think you can find it, Three Strikes, where, where he basically steals the scene. It, I think it was outside of the, one of the, he talks about, like, one of the great, you know, scenes where he's outside with Brian Hooks. He's just talking about like, hey man, can I get some money from you, 40? Like, I just got out of jail, what's up? And 40 just goes on this, like, basically it's, he's talking in real slang, this is how he talks in real life, but it sounds like a lyrical flourish, right? And so like, he's, he's coming into this, like, he's coming into America's consciousness, but he's still the dude from Vallejo, right?

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  And that authenticity is just really, it's really dope to see because we know how this life really changes you, right? But he is somebody that him, Short, and a lot of people that come out of the Bay are very grounded in their reality. Marshawn Lynch is a great, another great example of this, where they're grounded in their reality. Like, you're gonna come into our world and you're gonna like it, or I really don't give a fuck. Like, that's really the Bay Area mantra, except that we have just all of this charisma out here that people just seem to want to, like, hear what we have to say. And our very full, authentic self, right? And 40 is able, was kind of, him and Short were, it's kind of the blueprint for that. And that's kind of what.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  What raises us as Bay babies, like, oh, okay, we can do that, too. We can also be our full authentic selves and still kill it on a mainstream level. And Forty was the one that taught Forty and Short was the one that taught us that.

• 1:10:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm interested you saying that like hyphy existed and E40 sort of entered that world, you know, as himself and did his own version of it, brought in like the crunk influence, Lil Jon, of course. Like, what do you remember about the hyphy era in real time? Like, what is it about this specific musical style, like this culture, this collection of stars that made hyphy such a massive phenomenon, you know, both locally and for a moment nationally?

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  Hyphy comes on to the scene on a national level in '05, but it's important to learn when it comes into our ethos as the Bay Area. And that that came in 19, around 1994, in the early 90s. Keke the Sneak, who coined the term, right? And then, so it is, the term is coined in Oakland, but every bit of the aesthetic that you see of hyphy, that we think hyphy is, the shutting down streets, the dancing on buses, the glasses, the sideshows, the ghost riding the whip, that aesthetic comes from Mac Dre and that comes from Thizzy and T.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  And Mac Dre is a very important character when we, is the probably most important character of the hyphy movement, right? Because he brings that aesthetic with the Trill TV. And by the way, Mac Dre around this time, in the late 90s to early 2000s is having a second wind of his own, right? Because in the early 90s, he makes Too Hard for the Radio, which sounds to nothing like hyphy, right? And then, you know, he gets in, he gets in, gets in trouble in Fresno over the bank robbers, bank robberies with the romper room, bank robberies, he goes to jail, then he comes out in the late 90s and he is trying to figure out a new sound. And that's, then this is, and then he becomes the Mac Dre that everyone sees right now, right?

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  He's, he's doing, he's making songs like the thizzle dance, right? And it's also important to know the distinction between the two factions of Valeo, right? Because this is very much something that was cultivated in Valeo. Even though the slang was from Oakland, it was very much cultivated in Valeo. And then there's two sides of this, which is you got the country club crest where Mac Dre is from. E40 was actually like born and had some of his first few formidable years, but then you have, you have that, and then you have the hillside where E40 eventually lives off of Magazine Street, right? And these two sides of the city got a little bit of funk, like they just do, right? And these two guys are the faces of that, right?

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  And so there's, there is, you know, there's tension as this is happening, right? Like, Mac Dre, like, they never, they never had like direct, like, physical conflict, but Mac Dre, you know, threw some shots at Forty and, you know, and I just referenced Dusty and Disgusted when Forty goes to settle some 203s on the other side of town, on the other side of town. He's, the people from Thiz take that as a sign of disrespect. There's a really, really good interview on the Thizler by my dog, D Nast, where they talked to Doobie from Thizzy and T. And he basically gives the full scope. See, I would encourage you guys to listen to that one on YouTube, because that really gives you the whole history of it.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  All that to say, the crest and hillside was funkin' heavy, right? And so we, so boom, fast forward to 2000, where Mac Dre is getting his second wind and Forty's still doing mob music, right? He's this, this star, he's doing songs with Nate Dogg. He's like a real, like, on the mount, he's on the Mount Westmore, if you will, right? Like, by then, he's already there, right? And, and Mac Dre is trying to figure stuff out, right? But then Mac Dre dies, or gets killed in Kansas City, right? So there's, so when you ask me, what is my consciousness during this time? It's two, it's two generations, because my, I remember when Mac Dre died and, or got

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  killed, and it was my pops who told me the news. And that's when I, like, I started hearing thizzle dance on KMEL, but that was more of like who my pops listened to, right? He was listening to Mac Dre and he was listening, and he was the one that was really locked in, because you got to think, though, Mac Dre, he was born in Oakland, lived, obviously raising Valeo in the crest, but he had moved to Sacramento, right? So like Forty, who has a lot of ties in Oakland, not to say Mac Dre doesn't, and people don't listen to Mac Dre, but like, for my generation, it was more like, okay, it's Forty, it's Short, as Mac Dre is getting this like other ascent, his second ascent, right? Because like when I'm telling, when Intermajor Way is happening, all this stuff is happening, Mac Dre's in jail.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  So like, we're hearing all Forty and then Mac Dre, to at least me, was like, oh, this is like a new artist. My dad's like, nah, bro, Too Hard for the Radio was like, before you was born, right?

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  But you, you see, there's this tension that's building, because when Mac Dre dies or gets killed, and then for, you hear Federation hyphy, which is my introduction into hyphy. That's about like '03.

• 1:15:20Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  And you hear Forty's verse, and he rips it, right? And so I'm like, oh, okay, so this is like, okay, Forty might be the face of it. Then that's where the tension starts to come in between Thiz and, and, and there was already like, street tension in Valeo, but there's this tension that comes on, like, hey, man, like, we, we're, we rock with you, but like, why are you doing this? Because, and Doobie says this on the interview with, with Thizler, where he's like, hey, man, we don't say, you know, hillside people don't say Cuddy, and we don't say Saha, we don't say Weebles, like, why are you taking our stuff right now? Like, and it's their tension, and this is all along the lines where Forty and Mac are starting to patch things up, right? Where, you know, Mac Dre was supposed to go into, I believe, the quarterbacking video, he was supposed to have a cameo in that, right?

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  And, but it wound up not working out. And, you know, they're starting to like, say, hey, we're gonna make a song together, but then, you know, Forty starts jumping on this way, this hyphy wave, right? Like, you know, this is, this is, and not like in a nefarious type of way, because, you know, Keke the Sneak was on, was on some of Forty's, like, best records, right? Like, he was throughout the 90s, and Keke is also this, he had, they have this song called T-Sharp Blue Jeans and Nikes, right? And he's, he's, he's an organic person, but this, this tension from Valeo politics is getting in the way of that, right? And so I'm hearing this, I'm hearing Forty, I'm hearing Mr. Fab, right?

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  Son of a pimp is like a real formative experience, right? Like, but it's funny, because Mac Dre signs Mr. Fab, and they, Thizzy and T puts out Son of a pimp, and E40 is on it, which was kind of a weird tension point as well, right? And then, and then Mac Dre gets killed. And I keep bringing that up, because that's such a big thing, because what happens is,

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  you know, it's tough, it's a monumental loss for the Bay, but it's coming at this time when Forty, when hyphy's about to start reaching its zenith. And you have, you know, Tell Me When to Go comes out, and that just takes it to the stratosphere, and, you know, my get a report card comes out. Now, my get a report card has hyphy elements to it, it has hyphy songs, but it's basically hyphy and crunk, right? Like, it's, it's basically hyphy and crunk coming together at both of their peaks and both of their zeniths, right? So it's, it's a very mainstream type of record.

• 1:17:46Speaker 00

  What's the difference for you? What is the difference, you know, what's similar about hyphy and crunk? Obviously, Lil Jon producing Tell Me When to Go, and also Blow the Whistle. You know, Lil Jon is involved with some of the biggest hyphy records, but what is the difference between hyphy and crunk to you?

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  Man, I think it's just the cultures, to be honest with you, man. Like, I mean, not to say that, like, Atlanta and the Bay have a very symbiotic relationship, you know? I'm not gonna say that we don't, right? Like, Excuse me, Elevators was premiered on KMEL, that's, that's how we know, yeah. And like Too Short moves to Atlanta in the early 90s, basically influences a whole generation of Atlanta rap, like, for real, right? But like, we have always been like distant cousins with Atlanta and Atlanta sound, right? Like, you know, where did black folks go during the great migration? You know, they went to Atlanta, they went to Chicago, they went to Oakland, they went to Detroit, right?

• 1:18:44Speaker 01

  So like, every, Houston, you know, we all, if you're black, you got a cousin from Texas, you got a cousin from Atlanta, you got a cousin from Detroit, like, it was a symbiotic relationship, and I think that that's why, you know, on Wax, it just, it was such a great marriage, because at the end of the day, you know, we kind of got lost in this in the streaming era, but like, rap and music in general is just communication. We're just communicating with each other, right? And so how that goes back to, you know, the hyphy movement, as this thing is bubbling up, Forty and, Forty and Short, because they are, you know, they are our pillars. Even Mac Dre and Thiz will tell you, like, they are our pillars. They kind of become the faces of this, right? And there's other faces, like, when hyphy hit the streets, bro, it was, it was in Valeo,

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  but like, you also have different factions of what hyphy is, right? Richmond got their version of hyphy with Left and Frontline, right?

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  Oakland obviously has its version of hyphy, right? And then Frisco, Fairfield, Rick Rock from Fairfield, right? Fairfield makes sure that the Bay has to claim them at all times. It's hilarious. Fairfield is so far away from, from.

• 1:19:51Speaker 00

  It's pretty far, yeah.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  It's pretty far away. Oakland, right? But it's, they part of it, because they just mass themselves into the room, right? But you also got Frisco, and they got Big Rich, and, you know, RBL Posse, right? And that's, that's also like influencing young Larry June to come into the fold and kind of take the baton for us, right? But you have all of these different factions, but the face of it, when it's supposed to happen, is Forty, who isn't really like a hyphy artist, who, he's just kind of like putting his little, he's putting his thing on it, he's also putting the national spotlight on it, same with Short, but the face of it is dead. So what ended up happening?

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  The, Thiz can't really, you know, capitalize on it, and then what happens to the wave? It doesn't necessarily stay in the Bay. It basically starts, you know, like YG, you know, everybody in LA starts to get their interpretation of it, right? Like, Chris Brown tries, tries to like, take his interpretation of it, it becomes this national thing, and, you know, Mac, Mac and Thiz don't get to reap the rewards that they do until like later in this, right? They're almost forgotten in this, in this space, and that leads to even more tension. Even though Forty, I would say to his credit, did his best in what he thought, like, he did his best, like, in the Tell Me When to Go video. There's a lot of Valeo people from that side and then there's also the Mac Dre signage

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  that is in the video prominently. And he always like says that, hey, man, like 40, excuse me, 40 always says that Mac Dre was such a dope rapper and was, you know, mad that they didn't get to work together at a point in time. There was a lot of stuff in their factions. There was funk, but not between them two specifically, but people around them. And Valeo is such a small place, man, you know. It's, and so, you know, you're gonna see somebody that you know at all times, right? And that kind of like keeps, you know, that keeps the funk to a certain level, right? And so they were going through a lot of this, but hyphy, the reason why it

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  didn't go is because the face of it was really gone, right? And so, you know, it got commodified and now we're having like hyphy night in the Bay Area, right? Like the hyphy cam at Warrior Games. You know, it's not, it's not, it's not hours anymore.

• 1:22:08Speaker 00

  Hyphy night. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 1:22:11Speaker 00

  That's the way of things, I guess.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 1:22:14Speaker 00

  Is that a huge disappointment that hyphy didn't blow up, say, the way Crunk did? Or is it almost cooler that hyphy was in, in just sort of too weird, too regional, you know, too hyper local to really work nationally? Is that sort of a badge of honor, you know, that this couldn't quite translate because it's too specific to this place?

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  It depends on, I think it depends on who you ask. You ask one of my folks, like, like, people that are my age, like babies of hyphy, like the All Blacks and the 20 Second Gyms and the Guap Dad 4000s, right? Like, it's, it's like, it's in us, but we also want to use our creativity to be like, we're not just hyphy, right? Like, if you listen to, like I said, the Little Beans, the 20 Second Gyms, the One Umbrellas Right Now, like, it has them elements, but like, it's a totally different sound now that it seems like sometimes hyphy cannibalizes that already because everybody's expecting that out of us. And, you know, like, the Bay is one of the most eclectic places on earth. And you can have, at a place where

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  you can have a park exist, but you can also have a digital underground exist, you can also have hieroglyphics exist, right? Like, and, you know, I sense this, like, my generation, when I go kick it outside, like, it's all of these different factions just kicking it, like, at one time, right? And it's no necessarily barrier or judgment. It's like, hey, man, we all are kicking it and we are all just cool at what we do. And we have different aesthetics to other people, but it's all stuff that is simultaneously the same for us, right? Like, we can all exist in a place. We can, we, it feels like we invented the term intersectionality. But you see that a lot in this thing where my generation is like, hey, man, we kind of

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  want to get our own thing going. But, you know, you talk to, like, Mr. Fab, I remember talking to him a few years ago about this, but you talked to him and he's like, man, it was kind of a missed opportunity for us because what happened was a lot of these people got label deals, not necessarily album deals, they got label deals to where they were exposed, they were expected to, you know, we're gonna hire an HR arm and we're gonna hire all of these. And we're like, hey, man, we just want to make music. And so, like, when they got these label deals, they didn't know what to do with in that time. And that was like, this was pre empire days where there wasn't an infrastructure, right? Like, 40 had an infrastructure, but he built that brick by brick. And then you're expecting all these other people to just kind of build it brick by brick, when they might not have, one, the institutional knowledge,

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  or the wherewithal to, you know, run an active label in the midst of a mainstream conglomerate, right? Like, you know, Warner picks up 40 for that time when he's in, when he does, when he does that jive deal, like, he has that and then Warner takes him, when he does the Little John deal for my gutter report cards. So it depends on who you ask, what hyphy is to them. Like, we still, you know, like, it's in us, it's in us. But we also, part of us wants to get past it and not in a way where like, hey, man, this isn't part of us because it's in our ethos, but it's more of like, we have so much more to give you guys.

• 1:25:35Speaker 00

  You need your own thing.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  In the hyphy structure, but we, we can get our own thing because we, we build waves in the Bay, bro. We could just do it. Like, that's just, that's, it's in us. And hyphy's a great example of it. And so, yeah, man, like, it depends on who you ask.

• 1:25:51Speaker 00

  Okay. Just to wrap up, you sent me a song, an E40 song from, I think, 1998. It's called Flashin'. Like, it's especially sort of wild and sprawling and eccentric. I don't even know if there's a chorus on this song. And you said, this man literally started Kendrick Lamar's whole career in one song. Yes. And I was wondering if you think Kendrick Lamar is aware of that. And I was wondering just how you hear E40, even in out of town rappers, even in the most mainstream rap music now, like, where do you hear E40's influence now?

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  So, I want to explain my Kendrick Lamar take. I still think it to be true, but I would like to do that real quick. So, Flashin' is a song that was in the late 90s by E40, where he's rapping and he's lyrical flourishes. Like, the thing about, like, 40 is these lyrical flourishes are just so expert and so clear, and yet you can't rap them as a human, as a human being. Like, I know so many of these flourishes. I was thinking about it when I was covered here, right? Like, I stopped in the middle of the street to grab my heat, to grab my heat. Man, it's the same motherfucker I got into at the club last week, right? Like, I.

• 1:27:02Speaker 00

  That's excellent, actually. I was gonna say, don't try this at home, but you got, you've been practicing. You're versed in this.

• 1:27:07Speaker 01

  I have my whole life to practice.

• 1:27:09Speaker 00

  Nobody else try this at home. Okay.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  Right, right? Or like even Sprinkle Me, where he says, like, you know that shit can't cool? Shiggy, do you don't think we got about the sound mic and act about the fucking fool? Like, those types of things, he has these lyrical flourishes. But in Flashin', he has, he talks about, like, basically, if somebody has him fucked up, he's gonna have to flash on him, right? He has another lyrical flourish in there. Before I get to lyrical flourish that I want to talk about, is where he talks about how the rookie went to go to the store and he asked for a Rossi Row and he got him back to Bleed and I had to flash on a motherfucker, right? Like, that is something that is, you know, we all deal with, right? It's something that we all have to go through.

• 1:27:47Speaker 00

  It's a very common issue, yes.

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  But there, there is a point in Flashin' where he goes, I'm ignorant, I'm fine, I'm going for no apparent reason, just do, do, do, do, do, do. And it basically sounds like the art, the art of peer pressure, when Kendrick goes, does the do, do, do, do, do. And I know there are a lot of people that are gonna be listening to me and be like, Logan, isn't that just a coincidence? Like, that's just one thing, right? And I would be inclined, I would be inclined to say yes on certain types of, on certain times. But if you listen to Good Kid Mad City, there's a lot of references to 40, right? Even when he saw, on Money Trees,

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  where he's like, we listened to that Earl Stevens after school, right? And there's also, and as you hear Kendrick and the rest of the discography, he's sometimes a cover artist, right? In a good way, right? Like, when, and when he, King Kunta is basically Mossberg, is basically, we're just taking Mossberg and we're gonna rap the same thing, we're just gonna do our version of it, right? But there's a lot of, like, references to 40. And then you go back to the like that verse. And by the way, before I get to like that verse, Kendrick Lamar is also an artist of lyrical flourishes. It's just what he does, right? And it's, and it's similar, if you listen to Flashin', the lyrical flourishes are basically

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  the same, where they just, like, they say, you know what, I'm a, these two people, like, you know what, I'm a normal human being, Kendrick and Earl Stevens, I'm from the, I'm from Valeo and I'm from Compton. But sometimes I'm just gonna go, like, live in the flow state for like two months, right? I'm just gonna live there. And that's basically the type of rap that they have. And I think about, like, a song like N95 from Kendrick where he goes like, if I put on my juice, I got none, none, none, right? Like, he basically has this lyrical flourish. I can't do that because I haven't been practicing to go rap this Kendrick Lamar for the last two weeks.

• 1:29:49Speaker 00

  It's pretty good.

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  Going into this. But, but, but like, he has inside, you could see how it is, they, they basically, like, I go back to the communication part, basically, like, feel like they're artists speaking to each other. And that brings me to the like that verse, where Kendrick shouts out not only 40, but he shouts out the click, right? People clicking up, but cannot be legit, nor 40 water, tell him, uh, right? And then, and then after he finishes the verse, which, like, puts hip hop on his heels, what is his first ad lib? 40 water, 40 water. Basically, he's paying homage again, right? And you could see, if you listen to it, I want your listenership and your viewership to just, you know, play in a major way all the way through, and then

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  play Good Kid Mad City all the way through. I'm just saying, you're gonna hear a lot of, you're gonna hear a lot of similarities between both of those artists. And one thing I love about Kendrick, I love a lot of things about Kendrick, is. He not only pays homage to the artist, but he plays homage to the album track version of an artist like Kendrick Lamar is paying tribute to

• 1:30:55Speaker 00

  Deep cuts.

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  Which is, which is a huge deep cut. When he went to go do Pac and his last GNX record, right? What did he do? He didn't do like All Eyes on Me, right? Like he did Made N Words, right? That's what he did. And, but you see the communication between them, right? And also like Kendrick, um, you know, putting to, uh, put paying homage on the GNX tour to Mac Dre, right? In the Bay, putting him in as an influence of his. And I want to say another thing, man, like, uh, we didn't talk too much about, one thing I want to say about hyphy is, you know, people see, um, the, uh, they see the, what we see on camera, right? They see the dancing on the buses. They see just

• 1:31:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, the ghost riding.

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  The ghost riding the whip. But what I, I, I really want people to understand is, man, like I talk about rap and music in general being a sense of communication. I want to like, tell the listenership and the viewership, like what was going on during that time, right? And what was going on during that time was, um, you know, a lot of like hardship in Vallejo and Oakland, right? So like in 1993 in Vallejo, this is around the time that, you know, Forty's getting his Jive, uh, deal. Uh, the federal government is taking, is shutting down Mirror Island, which is a, was a huge economic boost for the city of

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  Vallejo, right? And it is, uh, they take that away and they basically are saying, hey, we're going to shoot movies here a little bit. We're gonna, you know, but we're not, like all the workers that work here and that depend on this, you know, you can either move and get your job somewhere else, or you know, you ain't just, you're just not gonna have a job, right? So throughout the nineties, Vallejo is, is trying to figure itself out through that time, right? And then you have, um, and as that's, as that's happening, you are having, um, the Vallejo Police Department, um, shooting black and brown people. And not only doing that, but there was an article that came out recently about, um, the practice

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  that the Vallejo PD would have. And like they would bend their badges every time they killed a citizen. It's like a badge of honor, right? And so there, you're dealing with that. And then as a miss of that is happening, the school district and the city goes bankrupt because they have a mismanagement of funds. And then also they're having to pay out lawsuits because of this, right? Uh, and in Oakland, same thing is happening. They're having to, the, the school district is having to go through receivership because they don't got it. They, they're, they're in chronic debt. Meanwhile, the Raiders, who, you know, a team that I love, have a complicated relationship with, and I wrote about this as well, um, spend all the public dollars to bring the Raiders back to Oakland. What does that do? That takes away funds from the, uh, the school district and it takes away funds from a whole

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  generation that didn't really, um, that didn't really, that didn't deserve that, right? And so how does that go back to hyphy, you might ask, right? So as this is happening, there's a lot of like pain and trauma that is happening with these people. And what is the, what happens when, you know, I, I'll bring this to a personal level, like when this stuff in Oakland is happening in the early 2000s, like I'm a kid. So, you know, I'm hearing, you know, the gunshots after football practice, because I'm trying to get on the 45 to go to the Coliseum bar to get my ass back to the lake before something happens as a 10 year old. Well, none of my football pads, you know? And what is, what does that do? You know, what do you do to escape? You know, sometimes you take your little ism, or sometimes

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  you're listening to music and dance. Sometimes you're doing both of that, right? And so a lot of these people, it is a, they're communicating, their, Kyphy is communicating something. Now typically it's similar to, you know, we're not LA, but it's similar to, you know, how the riots basically made, um, nothing but a G thing, right?

• 1:34:52Speaker 00

  G funk.

• 1:34:52Speaker 01

  And it made G funk in general, right? Um,

• 1:34:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  And it, it's, but it goes back to what I'm saying. Like music is, is a form of communication, right? And, um, you know, that is, that, that, that's something that is important to know in this because yeah, people was like, you know, having fun at house parties and all of that stuff. And yeah, they was on camera, like, you know, dance at all buses and stuff. But like, if you look at the deeper meaning, they're really trying to tell you that shit's fucked up right now, right? Like we're, we're shining a light, light on this, but we're trying to make the most out of this, right? Like we're trying to figure it out and we're trying to survive. And I think that that's the thing that, you know, hyphy, you know, that's what it's weird when it's like, it's commodified. It's like this thing to be cool. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:35:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  And while it is cool, but like a lot of these people that are listening to it now have no idea or not even like listening to the message that people are trying to say, right? Like, bro, why do you, why do you have this face, bro? Because you're trying to cope. You know what I mean? You're taking something that is, that, that is trying, that you were trying to cope through and you were dancing because you're trying to, you know, you're trying to have a good time, escape. Um, and it, it, it, we shined a light on it, but like, I don't think it's disheartening that people got the wrong messaging around it, is all I'm saying. Um, that's the disheartening part. Uh, and hyphy in particular, like I, I do want to make sure that that is, there's a lot of people that like, hyphy means a

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  lot of things to different people. In fact, when, you know, uh, when Keek, you know, coined the term, it was basically like, oh man, you tweaking, like you hyphy.

• 1:36:29Speaker 00

  You're hyper.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  You, you hyperactive right now. You'll chill out, right? And so,

• 1:36:33Speaker 00

  It was, it's not a good thing.

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  And we made a dollar out of 15 cents with it, you know, we did our thing. But it is, that's, that's something that, you know, people that look like me continue, especially from this region continually have to do. I didn't even get to the point in the early 2000s when, you know, the local leadership out here in the Bay is actively trying to make gentrification happen, trying to take people out of the place that makes it great, while also taking funding away from these people, right? In order to make themselves more attractive for people on the outside. That's something that we have to constantly deal with. Um, and so it's, uh, that's important distinction too. I know we got a couple more questions, but I just want to make sure that we had, that we, that we do understand like

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  all points of what this movement actually was saying and what we were trying to invoke to the world.

• 1:37:21Speaker 00

  That's really beautiful, Logan. I don't think I have anything, I don't even want to try to add anything to that. That's really

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  I do have something that'll make you, that'll make you happy though. I got something for you. Hold on one second.

• 1:37:32Speaker 00

  All right, let's wrap up with something that makes me, let's, let's, let's bring it back up.

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  I got some, I got some stuff for you. Hold on.

• 1:37:37Speaker 00

  Okay. All right.

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  I wanted to show, I, I wanted to show you this. I wanted to show you this.

• 1:37:44Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  This right here, this is from my wife. This right here is from my boo who was, um,

• 1:37:50Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  Who is a class of 2005 Vallejo High School.

• 1:37:55Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  And this is what they passed out at Vallejo High. Um, this is the, uh, we're going to frame this afterwards.

• 1:38:02Speaker 00

  2005.

• 1:38:03Speaker 01

  This is, um, this is one of the old school, like Manila folders. And inside, it has, it has E40's language right here. It has a couple charts on there, right?

• 1:38:13Speaker 00

  Oh my God, that's incredible. Yeah.

• 1:38:14Speaker 01

  And it also has a multiplication table as well, you know, it has some stuff here. I just want you guys, so this was, and I also want to say, we missed you at the class of 2005, um, 20th anniversary Vallejo High School. We missed you at the, uh,

• 1:38:30Speaker 00

  I'm sorry, I couldn't make it.

• 1:38:32Speaker 01

  I'm not a Vallejo High grad. I went to Berkeley High, but I am Ken. I, I love V-Town. Shout out Millersville. But I want, you missed it because, um, it was really interesting because like obviously I know hyphy and I know, I know the Oakland version of hyphy in mine, but to like see like folks from Vallejo doing it and they

• 1:38:53Speaker 00

  Vallejo High School is different. Right.

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  It's different. You got to understand, I'm sorry that I'm prolonging this, but you got to understand where Vallejo is in general, right? Like Vallejo is part of the Bay. It touches water and all the stuff, but it's about 45 minutes from Oakland, which E40 even says is like the Mecca of like, of Bay Area rap. It is the Mecca, right? But they have their own, they have their own little world because they're, they're, they're 45 minutes away across a bridge. It's really like they're here, but it's going to be a mission if you go to Vallejo. So they

• 1:39:25Speaker 00

  It's a two hour drive with traffic. Totally. Yeah.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  Two hour drive. Yeah. And then so like, but they have their own folks. When I was at the, when I was at, at the Vallejo reunion having a blast, you see like the difference in even how they dance, right? Cause theirs is all like thiz dance, right? We like in the Bay, not to say we don't do thizzle dance, or in Oakland specifically, not like we don't do the thizzle dance, but ours is a little bit more player. You know what I mean? They are just like,

• 1:39:48Speaker 00

  That's a very distinct.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  They over here like wiping their faces and stuff. They doing the thiz. And it was amazing.

• 1:39:57Speaker 00

  You're at the source. Yes.

• 1:39:59Speaker 01

  Shout out to my boy Hannibal. Um, but, uh, yeah, it was, it was, we missed you there. But this is, this right here is very history that I wanted to show you. This is, um, the My Get a Report Card folder, um, Manila folder with, uh, with language and multiplication tables. So I just want you

• 1:40:15Speaker 00

  Do you have two of those? Do you have, do you have an extra?

• 1:40:17Speaker 01

  I do not. I do.

• 1:40:18Speaker 00

  Oh, that's too bad. Okay. So go ahead and frame that and send it to me.

• 1:40:22Speaker 01

  I'm going to end it with this. I'm going to end it with this. Uh, about a year ago, um, Forty called me on the phone. And, um, and he typically does this because Forty is one of the, the magical things about him is that like he is tapped into everything. Um, in his words, to make a long story short and a short story long, um, like he, I remember the first time I met him, or not met him, uh, first time I got in contact with him, I was at my barber shop and my barber said, hey, bro, you know, Forty want to like, Forty need to get in touch with you. I said, okay. But why? It's because I, I recorded a video of, of him at a, um,

• 1:41:05Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:41:06Speaker 01

  At a Warriors game and he wanted like the footage, right? And so I'm like, okay. So apparently like his security guard, one of my homies, my, my dog Zim is also, is also one of my homie, um, uh, his name is Head. One of my, uh, one of my, um, bar, one of my barber's clients, right? And so like

• 1:41:26Speaker 00

  He knows people.

• 1:41:27Speaker 01

  The separation. He knows people, right? So I, Forty hits me with like this very detailed message of like, hey man, I, I saw you last night. And he puts like the date. I saw you last night and I saw you put a video of me. Can you send it my way? And I was like, it's good. But so Forty is somebody that's really tapped in. Everybody got a story like that. But this particular call, he was calling me and he was talking about how, uh, he was asking me like some questions about like Kaminga and the Warriors. Like what's going to happen with Kaminga?

• 1:41:53Speaker 00

  Oh, okay. He wants intel.

• 1:41:56Speaker 01

  He wanted intel, right? And was like, uh, but the point of it was, uh, we talked for like a lot of different things. I don't want to share here, but, um, he, I asked him, one of the questions that I asked was like, yo, man, like, what's the key to longevity? Cause he's been here for so long. And he was like, he was like, I ain't mind, you throw enough shit at the wall, it's going to stick.

• 1:42:18Speaker 00

  It's true.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  Shout out water, man.

• 1:42:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. Just throwing, that is beautiful. Logan, this has been absolutely wonderful. I'm so glad we finally did it. Let's do it again very soon. Thank you so much for everything. This has been fantastic.

• 1:42:36Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, man. It's always a pleasure. It's always a treat when players meet.

• 1:42:40Speaker 00

  That's, I'll, I'll take it. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Logan Murdock. Thanks to our producers, Chris Sutton, Justin Sayles, Juliana Rest and Olivia Creery. Animations and graphics by Chris Calliton. Special thanks to Cole Kutchner and thanks to you for listening. And now let's all go listen to Tell Me When to Go by E40. We'll see you next week.