RZA Taught Kanye, The Truth About Kendrick vs. Drake, & ODB Used a Paper Towel Condom??? | Ep 702

YERRR – RZA pulled up and this one’s a masterclass. From the birth of Wu-Tang to influencing Kanye and Blueprint-era hip hop, Bobby Digital breaks it all down. - Method Man, ODB & building Wu from nothing - Producing, sampling & manifesting greatness - Rikers performances, teachers who shaped him & leadership - Eminem, Dr. Dre, Lauryn Hill & the Drake vs Kendrick convo Wisdom, stories, and straight legend energy. All that and more on this week’s episode of FLAGRANT. INDULGE. 0:00 Metal Mike + Lure of Wu Tang 3:41 Fork in the road + Take long walks 10:44 The start, Meth was 1st + EPS adv 16:32 Influence on Kanye + Blueprint 18:25 Each 1, teach 1, Mally Mall + Barrier to entry 23:19 Producing + Place for samples 24:55 Observe and execute 27:51 Success, Choose the best + Doubt stops you 36:24 Manifest it in reality + Who was the best? 40:48 Meth's flows + Seeing our fruits 43:01 ODB + performing in Rikers 45:47 Knowing each other, 1 of 11 + Schools 56:57 Impact of teachers, Leadership + School performance 1:01:34 Mr Greenberg, Scientific + Being a General 1:08:32 A lot flows from Wu, The Abbott + Delfonics 1:15:28 Knicks in 6 + Orlando Magic 1:19:02 Dirty was the funniest + Being Rockstars 1:29:03 Choosing their names + Breaking out of rehab 1:32:32 RZA's flaws, Sacrificing + Only the Wu 1:37:36 Being present + Be patient 1:40:08 Sole focus, Blessings + The Bounce 1:44:12 Paris Jackson is an artist + Real aura 1:48:44 Still feeling nerves + Denzel Washington 1:59:13 Meeting Eminem & Dr Dre + Holo-what? 2:03:26 Hip Hop on tapes + Vintage feeling 2:07:35 36 Chambers + Cuban Linx 2:11:55 Schulz's fav - Patrice O'Neal & RZA's 2:15:39 Lauryn Hill, Battling Big L + Losing himself 2:22:20 Drake v Kendrick Beef + Meet The Grahams 2:27:18 Losing 1 battle + Drake's ICEMAN 2:31:31 "One Spoon of Chocolate" + Tarantino producer 2:32:13 Shanghai toilets + Banned his bro 2:38:11 RZA's gives us a bar This episode is sponsored by Kalshi. This episode is sponsored by Sesh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What's up everybody and welcome to Flagrant and today we are joined by a true creative legend, the inspiration, the seed, the architect. We're here with RZA everybody.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Hey!

• 0:11Speaker 00

  RZA's on the couch!

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Thank you RZA.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  Um, dude, thank you so much for coming. I have a, I have a question I have to ask you. I've wondered this for probably, God, I don't know, 30 years. Uh, there is a guy in my neighborhood. I grew up in the East Village, okay? There was a guy, I don't know if he was homeless or not, but he would ask for money on the street on 4th Street and Lafayette.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  I gotta know you talking about who?

• 0:33Speaker 00

  There's no way.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Mike.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  How the fuck?

• 0:37Speaker 01

  No way. He told us this. I was like, don't bring it up. He's not gonna know.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  So there was a guy, Metal Mike, right?

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Metal Mike, okay? And the thing about Metal Mike was, I've been waiting to ask you this for years. I can't even.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  I'm shocked he knows this. I'm sorry that I doubted you.

• 0:50Speaker 00

  I didn't know if, if he was being genuine or if he was maybe battling schizophrenia or something like that, like, I had no clue, but the thing was, you could go up to him and you could be like, yo, what's Wu-Tang up to? And he would give you detailed information about what you guys were doing.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  You know, so crazy, he was, um, he was, he was homeless and I think one day I, he, you know, I'm better, maybe he came up to me, maybe asked for a few dollars one day. I might have blessed him heavy, you know, I'm that type, you know?

• 1:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  And, and then, uh, but I might have talked with him for like 10, 15 minutes, right? And this is when, uh, 4th and Broadway Tower was, the Tower Records was there.

• 1:27Speaker 00

  That's right, yeah.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Uh, G, G Street Records was in that building.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  So, check it out, Russell Simmons lived, lived on the top floor.

• 1:35Speaker 00

  Of that apartment of the, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  It was, it was the old Shear apartment, actually, that Russell got from Shear. But anyway, and G Street was in that building and there's also another studio there. So I would always see him, but eventually he became my man. And that's my man, yo. If I had something, he saw me, if he saw me, his day was good.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  I understand, he was good. Like, I'm gonna eat well today. Um, um, but then also it came to a point where I was like, yo, yo, fuck it, hand out some stickers, bro. You know what I mean?

• 2:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  And then, like, I don't know, like, I don't know what we had in common. It's it, but I, you know, at this time, I spent like a whole hour talking to him.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  Really? You guys are connected.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you, so you probably, if he, if he told you some shit.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  Bro.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  He got it from the source.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  That's what I was always wanting, and there were people that would go up to him, like, this was the allure of Wu-Tang, right? Growing up in New York City, which is like, and also you don't have the internet this time. So the access is actual, like, you know, word of mouth information.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34Speaker 00

  And he had it, there would be dudes that would pull up, throw him five bucks, what up Metal Mike? Yo, what's Wu up to? Oh, and then there was just like random insider, they're working on the album, it's coming together.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  That's insane.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Why did they call him Metal Mike? Do you know?

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Um, I know if it was Metal Mike or something Mike.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Motor Mike, Metal Mike?

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Something, yeah, yeah. I just remember Mike, like, I don't, I don't, it was something else in front of his name. Uh, but yeah, that's, yeah, it wasn't Mental Mike, right?

• 3:01Speaker 00

  It might have been. I didn't want to make any assumptions. Where, where's Mike at today? Yeah, where is Mike?

• 3:07Speaker 01

  I haven't seen Mike in years, bro, it's like, I feel like I haven't seen him when the World Trade Center came down or some shit.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Like, not the whole city changed, I remember that shit.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  He told me, he was like, yo, they're gonna hit the town.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  He's on the inside of everything, bro.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Anyway, he is out there, you see this podcast, what up, bro, long time, man?

• 3:32Speaker 00

  Mike, mad love to you, bro. We always believed you, by the way, Mike. We kept asking what Wu-Tang was up to, we always believed you. Man, you got all this, like, just doing the research on you is really fun because it's like nostalgia, it's like the little memory lane you get to walk down, like, you grew up in the city especially.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:50Speaker 00

  And, uh, I, I was watching this, uh, this Drink Champs app that you did, it was like four hours with Nori, shout out to Nori. It was unbelievable. And there's a moment early in the episode where you even go like, like, I want to make sure we have time to get into shit. Like, I think you thought it might be like an hour or something like that? And it's like, you guys had plenty of time.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  You told it all.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Sweating in that motherfucker.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  But, but you, you told this amazing story and it was like a Bible verse you referenced even where you're like, one positive decision can be responded 10 times or something like that.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  And it was this decision, like, you had 20K. And you wanted to decide what you were gonna do with your life?

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:26Speaker 00

  How old are you at this time?

• 4:27Speaker 01

  This is, this is right before Wu-Tang, so I'm 21, 22.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  Can you, can you break down this moment and?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, without including, like, I always try to say, no, so at the end of the day, you know, I had 10K, Ghostface had 10K, that made the 20K.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  Got it, yeah.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  And the gag was, uh, the plan was to get a brick.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And at the time, um, you know, my pops had to connect.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  You gotta call Uncle Joe.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Uncle Joe. Yeah, Uncle Joe had to connect, and he's like, alright, so I decided to go down and meet Uncle Joe and talk to him about, about, about it. Um, and yeah, we, we, we talked about getting that brick.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? I was, I wasn't vegan then, so.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  So your brain was, you were operating on.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  I knocked, I probably knocked out like 17 chicken wings that night.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Cocaine is vegan, I think.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  But, but, but, but to paraphrase, I told it to Nori, I should paraphrase it now, but the, the thing was, yo, I had a baby in the oven, or maybe just born, right? So life was like, what are you gonna do?

• 5:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  And when you do negative shit, negative shit happened. Like, like, at this time, and a brick, a brick could get you straight, but this is like after I just won the trial.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  After Dirty had got locked up, after we, we fucking tore this fucking Ohio town upside down.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  Oh shit.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Constantly making the fucking newspaper.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  And it was like criminal activity was, was not only hurting you, it's hurting your community.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  It's hurting your family.

• 6:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  It's a fucking, really a big chain reaction of criminal activity. But yet money leads you to wanna do it, right?

• 6:16Speaker 00

  Need money to live.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  And so, so we, so we figured, yo, if we flip this 20, we could at least get 80.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  It's a nice come up.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  It's a nice come up, right? Um, but then.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  I was like nah.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  What, what happens where you go no? And that single decision might be the most influential decision in music. It's not just hip hop, but like that one decision spawns everything.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  So what happened, I gets back to Staten Island. And mind you, I just gotta add this part to it. You know, Ghost already been shot. You know what I mean?

• 6:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  And, and, and you know, in a way, he got shot based on, like he said, he took a bullet. Like that was, like, I got, I got, I got fault in that.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  Really?

• 7:05Speaker 01

  I got fault, yeah, cuz I'm part of what's happening. I brought him here to this, to this thing and shit, you know what I mean? So my man Wise got shot. You know what I mean? So it's just like, but we come out doing it again. You know what I mean?

• 7:19Speaker 00

  And you're feeling some sort of responsibility and almost guilt about this.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then I'm taking this fucking walk. And mind you, like I said, I'm, I'm acquitted of, of crime, right? I'm, I'm ready to have, have a second chance. And so, and I have a child, so I'm walking and I'm thinking, yo. And, and, and I advise this to anybody, take long walks.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Amen. Amen.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  I'm walking off Staten, I'm walking through Staten. People, people thought there was, I learned this, people thought I was losing my mind. Cuz I'm walking and I'm talking to myself.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  But I'm calculating, I'm thinking like, yo, that's it, that's fucked up, that's not, you know, that's not, I gotta do it like this. Oh, yo, what up, yo?

• 7:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Maybe you did have a few things in common.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Have a mic for close.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  You guys were talking with yourself.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  I was talking to him.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  I was frequencying with him. But Punchline came, yo, it was like nah. And I just told Ghost, I was like, yo.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  We gonna separate here. You know what I mean? So yo, I don't want you holding me down. I want you like, just go ahead, live your life. I'm gonna go live my life, yo. You know what I mean? I appreciate everything. Gave him the big hug. Gave him his turn, took my turn.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  How did he react to that?

• 8:39Speaker 01

  He understood in a sense of like, I mean, he always, like Ghost always looked at me as a big brother.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? You know, he was the big brother of his family. Maybe he saw me as a, as a big, a big, a big brother, as well as his brother.

• 8:53Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? At one point, his mother called me him. That's how much, me and him, we lived together. So that was my, that is my brother, right? But, yeah, he was like, okay, cool. And he might have went and kept doing what he was doing. You know what I mean? But I kept on that journey. Right? And it took maybe a month later, where I was like, I went and saw a man named Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith is, uh, he was the father of my old manager, Mel Kwan.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  He used to always like to play chess with me. And, and so I went over, played some chess with him and shit. And he was the one that started the company called Yamaka Records.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Where he signed, uh, Sir Abu and the Divine Force. And I used to always see the records stacked up in his house, little brownstone in Brooklyn, on Parkside Avenue, always. And he, they ran the company out of their brownstone. And so I was just like, I wanna start a company.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  So that's where you're soaking up game and you're realizing, I can do this as well?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  And it's not this unattainable thing where I need this office in midtown.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  I can do whatever the fuck I want.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  He, he did it right there.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  And he, he gave me the advice, he said, uh, go see Mr. Bill Warren. So Bill Warren, people always say, he was a lawyer, but he seemed like he could, like, like, where's Bill Warren at? He's in Hong Kong. Like, he was like, he was always like, very mysterious. His office, his office, now that you fucking make me go back to Mr. Warren, his office, uh, in Seventy Street, whatever, up in the, upper seventies, was in a building, at a, at an apartment. Go in, Mr. One, Cherrywood, never forget the little Cherrywood Japanese shit he had in there. You know what I mean, but I said, yeah, I want to start a company, I want to do this and then that. And I basically, the ten thousand went to form Wu-Tang Production. So I formed Wu-Tang Production.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  And at this point, do you know I'm going to be producing everything? I'm going to be the architect of all this. Do you know the talent that you want to bring into it? Or are you first going, this is just the brand and we just need to start with one record?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, the idea was to start with a record, start with a company, build a company. Get a, get a identity of the company, right? The logo is, was the identity of the company. So that was really just my business card. I mean, well, first it was, it was going to be some other shit. If you ever see the shit with the fucking head shit, but, but it was, but it became my business card.

• 11:18Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  And then that same business card is the cover of Protect Your Neck. I just went to one of those magnifying places where they put, they put the photography. He shot my business card and just blew it up.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  Hilarious, okay.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  That's my first fucking.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  But the first inception was what is the brand?

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, what is the brand? And I, I knew what the brand was because Wu-Tang was like, like, like special, special to me in the sense of, it was the illest Kung Fu movie I ever saw. It was the illest technique, like the sword style was the best sword style. And I just used, like I said, the Bible, and the Bible said, when Jesus comes in the last days, it said, out of his mouth came a devil ass sword and he used it to smite the nations. And I was like, well, a sword out of his mouth, that's, that's a crazy image.

• 12:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  But your tongue is shaped like a sword.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  And so I just took it as a metaphor. And I was like, well, we got the illest lyrics. And I already had a lot of different tapes from Dec, Meth, all of us. They always come to my crib and make tapes. So, so I said, let me form the company and go and sign them to my record company and start producing music with them. You know what I mean? The first one to sign was Meth.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  Really?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  That's why I call him Wu Brother Number One.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  Oh, wow, I didn't know that man was first.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, he signed the contract first, yeah.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  And how long to get all the rest of the guys?

• 12:40Speaker 01

  I mean, not that long, like, you know, within six months, everybody was done.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Do you have to pitch them on this greater idea? Are they all trying to get their own record deals at the time? Like, where are people in their lives?

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, everybody's trying to get a record deal. Everybody was, everybody's dreaming.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  But me and Jizza have already touched the dream.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Right? Jizza had an album out, was from a genius. We were so proud of that. I had the Prince Rockin' EP out. And, and, and, and it was like, into, to, so from their point of view, they in, they made it. You know what I mean? They're in the, they're in the system.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  You had something validated, something qualified.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, to have my own company was a whole nother thing. It was like off the record, but on the record, be on the record.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  It was other people vying too, like, like, because what happened, Shaheen was, was, like Shaheen, his first lyric came out of my rhyme book. You know what I mean? Him, him, he's my little brother's best friend at that time. They were still my shit and they go make demos.

• 13:43Speaker 00

  No way.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Until, of course, he started writing his own shit. Uh, that's when he was like 12, right? But anyway, but Shaheen, he ends up signing the deal with Virgin Records through a whole nother system. Right? And I felt left behind on that one, in all reality.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 14:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it was like, because I, you know, Shaheen was, was like, you know, I thought he was one of us. He was one of us. But he was also, uh, being produced by a great producer who didn't, who, um, I just think he's a very underrated unsung producer named RNS out of Stapleton Projects. If it wasn't for RNS, I'm gonna give him some credit here. I had the SP1200, he had the EPS. The EPS is a keyboard.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  He had to go down south or had to do something for the summer and go with his family.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  Let you hold it?

• 14:33Speaker 01

  He's, he wanted to, he took the SP12 because you could fit that in the trunk. You can't fit the keyboard, whatever, whatever. And so he gave me the EPS. And so now...

• 14:42Speaker 01

  I'm like, okay, what's this shit?

• 14:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  And what it did, the SP 1200 was stuck with 10 seconds, 12 seconds a sample, right? 2.5 seconds per pad. The EPS had about maybe 20 some seconds, but it wasn't limited. You could use it. Other words, on the SP 1200, just so you guys can follow, no matter what, you're never gonna get more than 2.5 seconds to use at a time.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  So that's why we had, we speeded it up and then slowed it back down.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  On the EPS, you can use your entire 10 seconds at once.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  So it gave you a little more flexibility.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Super flexibility, you know what I mean? So if you, if you go back and think about Wu-Tang music a little bit,

• 15:24Speaker 01

  you'll notice the two bar, four bar phrases is coming versus the one bar phrase.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  And this is because of the limitations of production?

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  Oh, so production limitations influenced the way that you guys have created the music, but also creates a different sound that nobody's really hearing at the time.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Exactly, and it's also, it's either limiting you or expanding you. Now, the other thing about the EPS was that now that I got the sample on a key, it spreads across the entire keyboard. So now I got 61 keys.

• 16:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh, so now you can really play with the sample.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  Oh, shit.

• 16:04Mark Gagnon?

  And you were like one of the first, you were stacking like 10 or 15 samples on one track.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 16:09Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, most of the time it's just like one or two.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  And people not think, and, because we have a lot of producers, they're making it for the, the, the SP 1200 is a drum machine that samples.

• 16:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  The EPS is a...

• 16:22Speaker 00

  Piano.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  That samples. Am I, okay, am I?

• 16:25Speaker 01

  So anyway, I know we kind of did.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  No, no, but this is interesting, because I don't want to like go too far here, but like, but am I crazy to see your influence on Kanye's production? And, and has he said as much, like?

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  Because to me, I see it, and I see like you taking these samples, especially the old samples that are done on the keys, taking these songs, chopping, speeding them up.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  And then I think you see a lot of that influencing Kanye, especially with the vocals.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, Kanye, first of all, respect to Kanye and, and another genius in our, in our, in art. His art and his fashion speaks for itself. But, um, nah, but he, you know...

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Uh, since, you know, I don't know. I try not to self-praise myself.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  That's what, let me do it, let me do it. It definitely sees.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Let me say this, let me say this. I always wanna, they, they did an interview with him one year and said, "Who is your hero?" And they answered, "It's Da RZA."

• 17:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, wow.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  So, and that's respect. And I look at him as a, as a, as a brother, a good friend. Anytime he hits the phone and needs me, I'm there, cause I, I, I really respect him. But when, when the blueprint came out, I was impressed by that album.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 17:44Speaker 00

  All of it.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  And so, and, but, but, but, but it was a, but, but I was pretty, Wu-Tang was pretty fuck y'all, you know that, right? He was pretty like, "Oh, that shit got niggas a week."

• 17:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  But time, the time, the time was moving and, and, and, you know, and, and others were evolving.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  And when I heard the blueprint, I was like, "Okay, niggas got it now."

• 18:07Speaker 00

  Really?

• 18:07Speaker 01

  And so I called, I actually remember, I think Jay-Z was on Hot 97, and I dialed up, bro. And I was like, "Yo," I wanted to just say, "Yo, congratulations, this shit is, this, yeah, this shit is right." And he was like, "Yo, I got the whole blueprint from you, man."

• 18:22Speaker 00

  Wow. So, wow. Has there ever been a moment in your career where you, where the people you influenced have not given you your flowers? Cause it seems like everybody gives it up.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  It, it's, it doesn't seem like there's an ego when it comes to you.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  I, I mean, it's, and back and forth, yo. The culture has been, has, has each one teach one. That's one of our lessons, right? Each one, teach one. So if you were able to be someone that, you know, if you were the caveman that started using fire.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  Yo, you gotta spread it.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, now, now you be using fire, they go, "Oh, this guy make fire good." Take, now motherfucker, yo, how about this? How about a grill, motherfucker?

• 19:05Speaker 01

  They put it on a pot, and put some oil in that shit, oh, we can bake with it, guys. But, but I'm, maybe I'm the first one that brought the two sticks together to make the fire.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  But then, once, once it's there, others continue to build. And then for me, I gotta say Marley Marl, right? Marley Marl was the guy that, that, that, yo, iced the fucking- Wait outside the radio station to try to see this guy.

• 19:27Speaker 00

  How old are you at this time?

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Thirteen, fourteen, you know what I mean? Maybe even fifteen, sixteen, even up to there. I remember somebody said, "Oh, I know Marley Marl. Meet me at the Hoyt Street stop on the A train." And, you know, he gonna be there.

• 19:42Speaker 00

  That sounds like a setup, bro.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Yo, me and Dory was right there.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  Was he?

• 19:48Speaker 01

  No. I didn't meet Marley Marl, bro, until like ninety-four or some shit, like years later, bro. No, I met him before that. Actually, another way Marley inspired me was that I met him before that. When Roxanne Shante was working on the album, I had a chance to meet her. So I'm nineteen now. And Prince Rakim has just signed the deal. And, you know, so eventually they would start making my songs. But also, people, you know, people know that I'm a lyricist. They don't know I'm a producer. Nobody.

• 20:22Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, really? You were known for rapping first?

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:24Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, wow.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  I'm not a producer. Nobody want to let me make the Bs. But all my tracks, besides, you know, I made the "Oh, we love you, Rakim" track, but even then, Prince Paul had to help me.

• 20:33Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Right? So they sent me to D R Period, Backspin, all the producers, Dice, Uptown,

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Eazy Moe B. Eazy Moe B made my first B-side of my single.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  Was it because you weren't able to do it at the time, or they didn't trust you?

• 20:52Speaker 01

  They didn't trust me. And also, and maybe rightfully so, because my equipment was a four-track with the turntables and, you know, and you hear that, it's like, "Okay, hold on, I'm trying to hear this."

• 21:06Speaker 00

  But I don't know, there was something, maybe there was more authentic about it. Maybe that cut through.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  Like, the production did feel a little bit different.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Right. But at the time, you know, there's no proof, right?

• 21:17Speaker 00

  Right, right, right, right.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  So, but anyway, we, we, we, um, we, um, lost the train, but at nineteen, known as a lyricist, I, I, I didn't, you know, wiggle, but I got a chance to meet Marley Marl then.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  And I went to his crib, uh, up in the, I think, near the Palaces.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Up in that area. And the dude had a SSL in his house.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  What's an SSL?

• 21:48Speaker 01

  So a SSL is the mixing board. It's the, it's the board, bro.

• 21:53Speaker 00

  So it has all the...

• 21:53Speaker 01

  It's the board. It's... The shit probably, at the time, was three hundred thousand dollars.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. Okay.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  So he has a SSL in his crib. You see these in all the studios.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  So the barrier to entry, I think that's where a lot of, like, especially, like, young people right now making music, the barrier to entry to making music back in the day was financial, bro.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Oh, financial.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  Mm. To even get in studio time was probably crazy.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  It's still crazy. But a SSL with a two, with a two-inch, twenty-four-track reel-to-reel, Marley Marl had that in his house. It was called the Marley House of Hits. And he had a radio line already connected to his system so he could broadcast.

• 22:36Speaker 00

  Directly from his house?

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is, he had that shit back, like, ninety-one, ninety-two.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Right? So, so I saw that. I saw the SSL in his crib. I saw this, the whole studio in his fucking house, bro. And so, that's what I did.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? As soon as I, you know, I had a Mackie.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  What is that?

• 22:57Speaker 01

  So a Mackie is like two grand, aight?

• 23:01Speaker 01

  It's a mixer though, you know what I mean?

• 23:03Speaker 00

  It's the Fisher Price.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. The Fisher Price shit. But eventually, of course, I got a SSL.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  I mean, I bought a million-dollar SSL when I, when I made it, bro. I was like, "Buck, get an SSL."

• 23:14Speaker 00

  So you knew that producing was the, was the key. You knew that that was the...

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I knew that.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  The stronghold for the business.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I heard, I said this with you, bro, I heard, overheard somebody was like, "Yo, Salt, Salt and Pepper is making beats now." Right? I think my, my manager, Mel Quan, because he know, he knows everything, right at the face. He's the one that's, "And I'm just trying to get in." I said, "Wow." He said, "Yeah, they, they paid a thirty-five grand to make a track." I said, "Thirty-five thousand?" He said, "Yeah, so when you go platinum, you could charge that." I was like, "I gotta go platinum."

• 23:48Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And yo, I went platinum.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Where was the place that you would go dig for samples?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Anywhere, but of course, um, in the Village, there was a, what's that store right there on Fourth and Broadway?

• 24:01Speaker 00

  Well, Tower was on.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Well, Tower was for like, if you wanna, I mean, well, Tower had the jazz section too. But not Fourth and Broadway, um, Sixth Avenue.

• 24:11Speaker 00

  Oh, that's, that's a.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Village Records.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  That's what Village Records?

• 24:14Speaker 02

  Was it? Isn't that on Sixth and, uh, Bleecker?

• 24:18Speaker 01

  And Bleecker, yeah.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So now, he was, now he was smart, right? You go in there to buy a record, bro? Like they had, like he had James Brown, Black Caesar, which is an album, so you wanna get that. And I never got a chance to really make a track off that down in our New York City, but I always wanted to. But he was selling that shit for a hundred dollars.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  Oh, cuz he knew what it.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, like, like he had, he had the big samples in there, hundred dollars, boy. You know what I mean?

• 24:45Speaker 00

  Cuz he knows if you're gonna use this, you're gonna go make a song, you're gonna sell it for thirty-five grand.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  Wow. So he was jacking prices up like that. So, and, uh, yeah. You're an interesting one because I don't know if anybody teaches you anything. You kind of just observe and then execute.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Respect.

• 25:01Speaker 00

  Of course, people teach you.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I learned, I learned, I'm not shy to learn from, from, from, from, I'm gonna learn from you today, bro.

• 25:07Speaker 00

  I don't know about that.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  I don't know about anything to offer you.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Hey, your timing.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I got you.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  No, your timing is, you got some timing, though. My timing's gonna be dipping next time you see me.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  But is that like, is that your process really? Just kind of like constantly absorbing?

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think that's what an artist's supposed to do. We ingest, so you can digest.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  If you don't ingest, what you gonna digest?

• 25:32Speaker 00

  I, dude, I think that's, that's, at least that's my theory in terms of like taking time off from creating sometimes. Like you gotta live, live a little if you wanna share something with the world.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then what I do, um, I like, uh,

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Because of my, whatever that is in my brain that just keep bung bunging. If I don't take time off, I shift disciplines. You know what I mean? So it's like, okay, well.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Cause I need to take time off of this thing.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Exactly. So like, like, like, like I'm, I'm writing the script right now. All supposed to be writing this shit. I've written it 30 days, bro.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  But, but, but I got this beat machine I've been carrying with me. Uh, Sprite system, this, this little weird beat machine. It's cool though. And I've just been playing with that every day as my pastime. While I'm promoting the film. So when I, but so by the time I finish getting out of this, I, and seeing the shit I see and I done probably been to six cities in fucking four days.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're grinding.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I'll get it. When I sit down, the lyrics for this, for these characters will flow out.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Wow. Announcements. Denver. We have added another show. It's gonna be on Sunday. I think 7:15. I believe those tickets are on sale. Literally this morning. So go get them right now if they're available. Then I'm gonna be out with Jelly Roll, Los Angeles, Netflix, the Joke Festival, the Greek Theater. We just added a bunch of great comics on that show as well. Salt Lake City, you're sold out. Uh, you guys have been asking for us to add shows. I will get back to you on that. Then we're gonna be in Virginia Beach, June 5th through the 6th. Uh, then we're gonna be in Halifax, Nova Scotia. TheAndrewShoals.com for all those tickets. We should be adding some more, uh, dates soon. Thank you guys so much. Tampa for great shows. That was amazing. Love y'all.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  Yes. Tampa was amazing. I also want to thank the good people in Providence, Rhode Island that came out to the show. We had a wonderful time. And if you were in Plano, Texas, Chandler, Arizona, Pasadena, California, San Diego, or Detroit, at the end of the year, I'll be coming to you doing one singular hour of standup comedy. Come on out, take a photo, shake my hand and have a great time. Alex, what's up?

• 27:38Mark Gagnon?

  Hey guys, I'm throwing a tennis series this summer. There's three dates. Just head over to AllLoveRacketClub on Instagram. I got the link there. Uh, we got music, food, free giveaways, a lot of tennis. It's gonna be some.

• 27:52Speaker 04

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• 28:20Mark Gagnon?

  What do you think's the thing in you that you're not scared to just try something new? Cause starting the business, even going from the streets to music to film, like what is it?

• 28:34Speaker 01

  I mean, at the end of the day, it's you, right? Like, who gonna stop you from being you?

• 28:38Mark Gagnon?

  But you never get scared like, oh shit, I don't know how to do this thing? And then you just like?

• 28:41Speaker 01

  No fear of failure? Nah, cause I mean, I don't fear failure.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  I'll say this to you. I believe the success is completing the task.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Like to achieve the goal, that's the success. Whatever happens after that is whatever.

• 29:02Speaker 00

  You can't control that.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  What about like interests that you took up? Were you ever afraid of being bullied or, you know, like seen as weird when you're young, being into all these Kung Fu movies or like reading eastern philosophy or Islam? Are you afraid people are gonna be like, oh, what are you, what is this thing?

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Playing chess. Yeah, I might, I might have a, I might, not now though. But my, my high school girlfriend told me this.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  She had a chance to like bring me back all my fucking letters and shit.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, just, you know, it was just a time and she was just like.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  She's trying to get back in.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. She's totally, totally a sister.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  No, of course.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  I'm married, my wife married me.

• 29:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Well, it was, it was, it was, it was to give a memory of myself because I wrote a letter that was very egotistical, conceited, foresighted.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Opinion of what life is going to be for her and what life's going to be for me. You know what I mean?

• 30:12Speaker 00

  You right?

• 30:13Speaker 01

  And, huh? No, she, she turned that well, but.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  But the point of it was that, and I hate to say this, but my conceit

• 30:29Speaker 01

  and confidence was almost at a level of naivety.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  It can blind you sometimes.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  But that energy meant that that is what I am and I can do.

• 30:44Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  So, so, so, so there's a lesson when you study the mathematics, right? And, and you know, the mathematics can be controversial to some people, but this is-

• 30:52Speaker 00

  Is this the 5%er?

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, the 5%er mathematics. The first question, right? It says, "Who is the original man?" And then it answers the question. It says, "The original man is the Asiatic black man, the maker, the owner, the cream of the planet Earth, the father of civilization."

• 31:15Speaker 00

  Preach.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  The god of the universe.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Okay? That's the first question, bro.

• 31:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  And you gotta memorize that. So now you're walking around, "Wait a minute, that's me."

• 31:25Speaker 00

  That's me.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And then later on, there's a, no, seriously, later on, there's another lesson

• 31:31Speaker 01

  that, uh, it says, "This question is crazy." Not crazy, crazy, like crazy. Like, like, like Mike.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  But crazy in a sense of, okay, but the question says, uh,

• 31:46Speaker 01

  "Why do we let, why did we let a half-original man, like Christopher Columbus, discover the poor part of the planet Earth?"

• 31:56Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  And it says, "Because the original black man is God, an owner of the Earth, and knowing every square inch, he chose for himself the best part. He didn't care about the poor part." Now, take that into consideration. You gotta choose for yourself the best part. And once you choose that best part, you can't care about the poor part. Now, where's the true best part?

• 32:23Speaker 00

  Where?

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Wherever you stand, bro. Where you stand. And so with that confidence, I mean, I got that when I was 11.

• 32:30Speaker 00

  Oh, wow, so that's deep.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, so now I'm 16.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  I'm like, I'm writing her a letter, like, "If you don't-"

• 32:36Speaker 00

  Shoes up.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  "If you, if you don't break, if you break up with me."

• 32:41Speaker 00

  You go to the porch.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  And the fast part is gonna be.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Right, so, so, so going back to your question is like, with that type of confidence in, in, in, in me, right? And, and, and, and no doubt, Papa Wu always said that too. So Papa Wu, I remember Papa Wu when I was like 14, and he, you know, he used to always drink vodka. Everything he said made fucking sense. Okay.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Off the vodka. There's always a guy on the block that's sober. He's nothing, nigga.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Everything he said made sense. I was, yo, I was sitting there one day, had a cold. I just kept sniffing it up, right, you know? He said, "Now, God, let it run."

• 33:35Speaker 01

  You gotta get it out the sand. It's trying to come out, God. I was like, "You're right, let it run." He said, "Yo, God," he said, "there was some, some shootout shit." He said, "Man, a lot of, a lot of niggas die from the sound." You know what I mean? Said, "Niggas, they be scared." Right, he said, "When you consider shooting, God, do the knowledge first. Don't fucking let the sound scare you." Right, people run, and I was like, and yo, he said that to me, trust me. And would you believe, like, two years later, I'm in a club.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Right? And shots go off.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  You start doing the knowledge.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Yo, and the, and I didn't, yo, I seen people move, I said, "Well, I'm moving, no, they do not." Bam, I saw the nigga fall.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  I'm not exaggerating, bro. You took him out? No, no.

• 34:28Speaker 00

  Do the knowledge, Ricky.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yo, and when the bullet hit him, hey, yo. Hey, yo, when the bullet hit him, we didn't see who was shooting. But I tell you this, bro, when that bullet hit him, the face he made, the, the, the, the impact of that bullet while he was running?

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Unforgettable.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  It's almost like a vibration came off this motherfucker's face, bro. Then he hit the fucking floor.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Then after that, one, two, three, four, five, six, because you should count to seven sometimes. Uh, six, seven, okay, for more.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Why, why count to seven?

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Because, because.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  We need, we need a security cam for the, of a shootout. Everybody's running, it's just a few dudes like. One, two.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Because you should try to do things within a pace of seven breaths. You should think seven times. You know what I'm saying? You could think, you actually can think seven times before you respond. That's how fast the mind moves. But motherfuckers is going off the impulse, off the fear. Right? So the punchline I was trying to get to, I digress by going to the runny nose and to the shooting. But other thing Papa Wu said was, yo, God, don't let doubt enter you. You know? That's why old Dirty says it on the song War High. Because it was, he always, Papa Wu, when he was talking to me, Dirty, 12 o'clock, you know, the young gods. He was the older god. I'm saying? And he would say, yo, God, don't never let doubt into your mind. God, doubt stops you.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  And so, so I entered a lot of these arenas without doubt. And Dirty says it on the song War High. He goes, I never let doubt into my mind because I know when I touch the mic, there's the rhyme. You know what I mean? So it's like, don't, this is it, bro. Flow. And so that's been my personality with so many things. As you get old, of course, human nature, life experiences failures, right? Don't act like I don't have failures, you know what I mean? But my failure is that failure. It's like, like we were talking about chess earlier. Like, I played a lot of chess because you could die a thousand times on the chessboard. Okay, so what? Play again. Just make sure that don't happen in life. You know what I mean? So, yeah, anyway.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  No, I just love this idea of like, don't let doubt creep in. And like the confidence and the power of confidence. There was this thing with Wu, I felt, and not even was, still is, is it like, it just felt like you guys had decided that you were the best at rapping. And nobody else decided it. And you guys did. And then everybody else was like, yeah, I think they might be the best at rapping. It's like you can almost, you can almost like ooze confidence into reality.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  And yo, listen, hold on now, if you go pound for pound, and you write out our lyrics, you might find that we were right.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  No, I'm not saying you're wrong.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  I know, I know.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  But like, it's like, you guys believed it.

• 37:30Mark Gagnon?

  It manifested at first.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  It manifested into reality.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  And then it just became this thing where, it was, it was almost like people who were hip-hop heads, took on Wu as an, as part of their own identity. Like, if you fucked with Wu-Tang, it was a way where you could communicate, like, yeah, I like real hip-hop.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  I like real rap.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 37:51Speaker 00

  Opposed to, I don't know, maybe there's some mainstream, I'm not gonna have to shit and talk about anybody, but it's like, yeah, and I, I always wondered where that ethos came from. But it's gotta come from you guys believing it.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  And if it looks like there's fractures in the belief, why would someone else believe it?

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's true.

• 38:08Mark Gagnon?

  So, if you all felt you were the best, who in the group was the best of the best?

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Well, that's good, because it interchanged.

• 38:15Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, so.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  Even, even to you, it interchanged?

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, we talked about that. At one point, yo, like, like, first of all, the JZA was the best.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  That's who I always thought you thought lyrically was.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  That was the, okay. But then as time went on, somebody else could sit in that seat. Right? Or, or somebody could say something that year.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  Like who?

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Like, at one point Killer Priest was the best. You know who Killer Priest is?

• 38:36Speaker 00

  No.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. Right? But he's one of us, right? At one point, Killer Priest, we was like Killer Priest is the eldest nigga.

• 38:44Speaker 00

  What was the song? What was the?

• 38:46Speaker 01

  He fucking wrote, uh, when he wrote that Heavy Mental album, uh, and he had to, he had to sit almost, almost there. But what happened was he, you, you may know him from the, on the JZA album, he's on that song Bible, Basic Instructions.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Before Leaving Earth.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  Before Leaving Earth, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Right? But at one point, and so JZA, he's, he's a JZA student as well, so, so Killer Priest, me and Master Killer are all students of the JZA. And Dirty became my student. And the rest of the Wu brothers look at us, me, Dirty and JZA as the three, like, elders, the three elders and stuff. And then, and then they pick it from us. But then when Ghost became the best, yo.

• 39:25Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  No, seriously.

• 39:26Mark Gagnon?

  Hit nine.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Ghost became the best, and it was like, yo.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  Back here.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying? And, yo, and then even, even, like, like, well, Ray, Ray.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Like, like Ray, like from two thousand and fucking four or five or something? Like when he started doing the Purple Tape part two.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  Or what about what?

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Well, part one, it was Ghost that's just like, fucking like, who the fuck is this guy? Like, I remember Dirty said it. Dirty was like, yo, Ghost is the best now. You know what I'm saying?

• 39:58Speaker 00

  Now, is there ego between the guys? Or is there like, is there this like camaraderie where you just kind of accept this martial artist is the nicest at this point in time?

• 40:06Speaker 01

  I mean, you may feel differently, you know what I mean? So, but it's never, you know, if you feel that way, what you gonna do? You gonna go right.

• 40:15Speaker 00

  Oh, so you could, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  You know who's killing it right now? To me, almost like twenty bars back to back, Meth.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, Meth.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Meth has gone crazy, bro. What the fuck, Meth is like?

• 40:28Speaker 00

  He's lifting.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. He went to the superhero on a mic. Yeah. In the gym, on the, on the front of the camera.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  And it's like, at one point, you know, he was always.

• 40:42Speaker 00

  He was nice.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was always, like, like, trust me, when we first came in, like, every one of them had something from, from me sitting here as the abbot, that was the best in that field and the best technique that adds to the war. You know what I mean? It's like, I knew Ghost and Ray were, were street niggas and all the street niggas is fucking with these niggas, for real. And, and not no facade.

• 41:06Speaker 00

  Real.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, trust me, yeah, these are the, these are, these are the high school dropout felons that's about to fuck and make a record.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  With the talent to do it, you know what I mean?

• 41:17Speaker 00

  Right. And you knew Meth could crossover.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I knew that.

• 41:21Speaker 00

  It's gonna be mainstream.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  And also, I felt that, even though, as he got, as, as time changed, I think he, he, um, he, he, he, he's less flowing than he used to, cause now he's kind of patterning in his, like, he kind of has a pattern that he maybe used ten times in a row. But, in the beginning, I said, nobody in the industry flows like Meth. Meth invent flows every day. In fact, if you go back and check Method Man flows, you could find ten other successful rappers.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  That are taking.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  That took that one flow.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  And it made it their entire.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Their entire flow.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  And, and, okay, when you guys see, you said this earlier about like, it's important to pass it on, like, you make the fire and you go do that. When you guys are talking amongst yourselves, are you going, man, look, we birthed all these dudes? Like, are you seeing your influence in music? Not just music, but like especially in music? And is there like a pride in it? Or is there a part where like, oh, they're biting? There's some sharks out there.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  I mean, in the 90s, it was probably, we probably be acting more like biting. But now it's. I don't want a nigga sound like me on no album.

• 42:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  But then as we evolve, it's also like, we actually, I think we actually appreciate the culture, the, the other heroes and even admire them now. Which is, which is, seriously, it's a beautiful thing, bro, to, to get out of your own way.

• 42:43Speaker 00

  Bro, yes. But hard for creatives.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, but beautiful because it's just like,

• 42:51Speaker 01

  you know, it's like Mike Tyson, right? Of course, he was the, the, the champion of, of my generation, bro. It's like one of the, like, come on, Mike Tyson.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  Come on. Right? But Muhammad Ali's generation is like, nah, Muhammad Ali.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  Every generation is gonna have their own. It's like, there are kids that grow up with LeBron, they never watched Jordan play.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  And we're arguing with them. But why would we? They only know LeBron.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. And now, the beauty of it all, though, is that there is a Hall of Fame.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Right? And it, it ain't one person in that Hall of Fame. It's hundreds of people.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  So.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  But you just got inducted into.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  That's what we got inducted.

• 43:29Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, congratulations, brother.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Can I, can I ask you a story about ODB? This is, this is what I heard from Joe Rogan. He references this.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Recently?

• 43:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He referenced, I saw a clip of it and I didn't hear the whole story, so I'm so curious. He is incarcerated at Rikers for a period of time.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  And then you and the rest of the squad go to visit him. And what happens in, in that visit?

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Well, they let us in. They let, they let Wu-Tang perform in Rikers, bro.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  Where you perform?

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Straight up.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  But did you have to like petition the city?

• 44:02Speaker 02

  Tell us the whole story.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  I forgot who did the business. I think Mook, my cousin Mook,

• 44:11Speaker 01

  he was on the management team. He might have been the one that kept working his hand to get it done. But Dirty was locked up, bro. And I don't know who came with the idea, because it wasn't me. But it was like, yo, let's go and visit, let's go perform in Rikers. We can't perform in Rikers with old Dirty. Like, like in jail, they're gonna let him come. And Wu-Tang is gonna perform in Rikers Island, bro.

• 44:35Speaker 00

  Yo, that's crazy.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  No, but the funny part-

• 44:38Speaker 00

  I don't know if you could be in prison going, "Ooh, baby, I like it raw."

• 44:50Speaker 01

  This guy's good.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  You know what's so crazy? Dirty went in there vegan.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  When I came in, we got in there. And they was like, lunch? He was like, he had two half burgers.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  And he was like, yo, god, fuck that. So you gotta eat meat in this motherfucker, dawg. So you gotta eat meat in this motherfucker.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  So you guys show up, and is it planned that there's gonna be a concert?

• 45:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yo, yo, seriously, like, they had it set up, bro. They, they, they let the guys out, the shit. They let the, you know, the prisoners to get their little location.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  They got the room, they had, it wasn't a great sound system.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  This is the producer talking.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Wasn't a great sound system, it's just like, but yo, nah, but we did that, we did that for him, with him. For him, and for, and for, and for Rikers, bro. Which is crazy, in hindsight, like, like, there's so many things that's kinda like, I won't say a blur, but like, you bring that up, it's like, that kinda don't make sense.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  It sounds crazy to me.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, no, at this phase, it's like, like, wow. The, the, the, the, what I would call it? Our camaraderie, our brotherhood, our, uh-

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Single focus awareness. That like I'm gonna say that single like like it's our world. We're moving in our world regardless of the world.

• 46:17Mark Gagnon?

  How do you get so many people to?

• 46:19Speaker 00

  Get on board.

• 46:20Mark Gagnon?

  Get on board with one vision like?

• 46:23Speaker 01

  That was we we that was we you know, we gave our word on that. You know what I mean?

• 46:28Speaker 00

  Um, did it help that you guys had relationships prior? That it wasn't just an art thing? Because sometimes people can be looking for opportunity in art. Not just art, but just any kind of like entertainment. So maybe the relationship isn't as strong as you think it is because it's actually more opportunistic.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  This is literally family.

• 46:47Speaker 00

  You guys were actually.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Our mothers knew each other.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Our mothers knew each other. Um, some dude's first blunt is at Capadonna's house. His mom's letting them smoke it. And I didn't talk about Ms. Linda like that. My mom's name is Linda too, though, right? But I'm just saying.

• 47:05Mark Gagnon?

  Could be any Linda.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. But you know, it was just like, but she said she rather it happened there where she could see them than rather somewhere in the streets. You know what I mean? You know, Ms. Dell, you know, um, my moms, like, like Dex said, you know, you know, they come to my crib and and and and you can make these. You can make these demos and you could turn the music up and you could get that music out. You know what I mean? That that that that was our, um, some of us our childhood, young adult, like me and Ray Kwan's in the third grade together, bro.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  Crazy.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  So it's just like that's he was and he was and not only we in the third grade together, he was my best friend. Like, you know, I mean, like he wasn't in the third grade, he's like some kid over there that I remember from the third grade. No, we walked home from fucking school every fucking day. You know what I mean?

• 47:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Before this shit happens. And then, well, I'm sorry on that. Then I moved to, uh, Brooklyn.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  And shit. I go to a fucking, uh, I'm like 11, 12, um, go to a weed spot. That's how I was back then. He's working in there in Brooklyn. Like, oh shit, oh shit, like.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's how, that's how the woo life is like that, you know what I mean? It's like, it was so connected, but it's, but I think it starts with my mother. You got mother, um, and my moms, like you guys, you know, when you was in Howard, when I was living in Howard, my mother was living right there. It's like, oh, wow, right? So our mothers, and our mothers, um, had history and, and vibes. And so when we came together, it was another layer. And some of us not that, like, because Memphis from Long Island.

• 48:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  But still, he moved to Staten Island at fourteen.

• 48:47Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  So now, in two years, he's, he's, he's, yeah, he's in it, yeah.

• 48:51Mark Gagnon?

  Wow. But you moved to Brooklyn and then you moved back to Staten Island?

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've been back and forth between Brooklyn and Staten Island. I'm born in Brooklyn, FYI, Kings County Hospital.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Bullshit, I'm gonna die, but.

• 49:04Speaker 00

  At that time. It's gotten better, it's gotten better.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's got time and shit. Uh, um, Brownsville, baby, you know what I mean? Basically, um, um, but my grandmother always lived on Staten Island, so.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  So you're there on the weekends or whatever?

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Or there because, you know, man, but let me say one thing about my family, bro. Before I was twenty, I lived in twenty-one different locations.

• 49:29Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's us, bro. And then it was always like, you know, like, oh, Linda and those kids back on the streets again.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  Really?

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was tough, you know what I mean? Yeah, it was tough, you know what I'm saying? So, but that's, that's, that's New York. It was always something like, oh, one mother just got a new apartment. She sent us down south until she got herself together.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Okay, now she's bringing us back. Mind you, it's like, it's already five of us. It's a two-bedroom.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Right now it's six, right? Another six kids. So now, we come back, we happy to come back home. Somebody, I don't know if my little brother, somebody set the mattress on fire.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  Back to Staten Island with grandma. Then all say, oh, you got another place. We live on 169 Cooper Street. Fucking, that's the LL train to Wilson Avenue. Bro, that's a long ride, bro.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  How did, you guys had, you're 11? One out of 11?

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, one out of 11.

• 50:28Speaker 00

  Where does somebody with 11 kids in New York City live?

• 50:31Speaker 01

  Wherever they can, bro.

• 50:33Speaker 00

  But how?

• 50:34Speaker 01

  No, listen.

• 50:34Speaker 00

  I don't understand.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Yo, when Ghost, like when Ghost wrote the song, cause Ghost, so Ghost, I think he's one of, uh, five or six. Dirty is one of seven. Dirty's parents, let's talk about New York. They're both city workers. His father's trans, his mother's a 911 officer. So they got Christmas toys. You know what I'm saying?

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Ghost's house is single, single mother. My house is mostly single mother. My, my, my, my, my, my father moved away when I was three. Then my stepfather moves in, but then he goes to jail. So,

• 51:14Speaker 00

  Oh, fuck.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  So it's, it's that. My, my dynamic is that. So my mother is, is a single mother. And when we say, uh, Ghost said, uh, four in the bed, two at the front, two at the head. Yeah, that's, that's my house right there.

• 51:27Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  It's like, yo, two, you wake up, somebody told you.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  I mean, just, you just think about like, people lives in a wazza right now. They might go, okay, if you have a house, you can find different places to put people. When you're in an apartment.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Bro, yeah. Let me give you one more of those. I'm gonna go poverty porn here.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  But, bro, at one point, 19 people, two bedroom apartment, bro.

• 51:58Speaker 00

  No way.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Check this out.

• 52:00Speaker 00

  Damn. And you're not even Mexican.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  You ever seen those moving blankets?

• 52:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  You gotta make a pile.

• 52:11Speaker 00

  No way.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And yo, and I'm going to school. And I got, and I got a girlfriend. Right? Like this is, I'm like.

• 52:17Speaker 00

  You bringing her over?

• 52:18Speaker 01

  No.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Everything I did was timed. Like, I know, like, if I, if I, if I leave school early, get there at two.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  Nobody's gonna be at the house.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 52:29Speaker 00

  But you gotta get her out before three thirty when the rest of the kids are back.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  It was a very, uh, yeah. I, I didn't have a nickel for the bus, bro. I had the bus pass and no nickel. I'm not making this up, bro.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  But you know what happens, though? I walked to school, this is high school.

• 52:49Speaker 00

  Why, 'cause they gave you the half fare?

• 52:51Speaker 01

  They gave you the, no, the half fare was not bad. I had the nickel pass, it's even better than the half fare. All you gotta do is pay a nickel.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  But you didn't even have the nickel.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  When I was a kid, I had a, I had a bus pass where you could just go, whatever. It was like they gave you the school bus pass.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you got forty, you had to pay forty-five cent or something.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  No.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  You were totally free?

• 53:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, in the white schools, they just give you the whole shit.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  That's crazy. There you go.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  I got the half pass, that's crazy.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Discovering the poor part of the planet, we let them do it.

• 53:23Speaker 00

  No, the, uh, the, the pass was based on how close you lived to the school. So, we lived downtown, but I went to Wagner Middle School.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  Which is, Wagner's on, uh, seventy-six.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 53:34Speaker 00

  But we lived downtown.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:36Speaker 00

  So, I think it was far enough where you got the full.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  But that's for the train.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  For the subway, yeah, but you could use it for the, for the bus, too.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, but Staten Island, look, Staten Island don't really got a train system like that.

• 53:46Speaker 00

  So, they just make you.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  It's bus.

• 53:47Speaker 00

  And they make you pay a nickel.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Pay a nickel, you gotta pay a nickel.

• 53:50Speaker 00

  And would the bus driver ever not let you on for?

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Bro, some days I got on because I, I put my hand over that motherfucker.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  Kicking a kid off the bus for not having a nickel is crazy.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Bro, they kicked me and my little brother off the, my little brother always tell me this story. 'Cause this, this happened in Brooklyn, though. So, Dirty House was, he lived in Linden Plaza. So, now I moved back to Brownsville, I'm living in Van Dyke Projects.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Right, which is.

• 54:18Speaker 00

  Tough.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  That's it, right there.

• 54:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  And this is, uh, this is, this is the eighth grade, though. So, like I said, I lived twenty-one places, bro.

• 54:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  I've been to, I couldn't, if I, if I go through the list of schools I've been to, you know what I mean? Most people go to two, you go to three schools.

• 54:34Speaker 00

  Elementary, middle, high school done.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, bro.

• 54:38Speaker 00

  You went to twenty.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Not twenty schools, but I went to a lot of schools. I went to, for elementary, I went one, two, three, five.

• 54:44Speaker 00

  Jesus.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  For, for junior high, I only did two in junior high, cause junior high is a short stretch. But I did IS sixty-one on Staten Island. And then I went to two seventy-five in Brooklyn, which is on Rockaway and Hagman.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Listen.

• 55:00Speaker 00

  How's that, is that by you?

• 55:01Speaker 01

  No, no, no, that's Rockaway Boulevard. You know, you know where Amboy and all that shit is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's just like, it's just like, uh, like, what, like MOP? Those are real, they real. Like, like that neighborhood?

• 55:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Those are my homies back in that day. You thirteen years old, but the dude you hanging with in the eighth grade, he sixteen.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying?

• 55:22Speaker 00

  He's eighteen in the middle school.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's sixteen in the middle school, yo.

• 55:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  And that school had a fucking-

• 55:29Speaker 00

  Driving you to middle school.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  Yo, that school had a fucking, uh, bro, it had like a, another, like a, a mental health wing. Like a mentally impaired wing.

• 55:41Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:41Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:42Speaker 00

  But, yeah.

• 55:42Mark Gagnon?

  They put the re- reason up.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, you want to put that, that shit, they should do it like that.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  Oh, they were too close.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  It's just fill over.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  That's not a good idea.

• 55:59Speaker 00

  You had a few trickle into you.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, like, you dealing with some, you dealing with a lot of, a lot of, a lot of different problems, bro.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  Anyway, but, um, anyway, just get out of that shit, yo.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  What happened? What happened? That's what I did, though. In which way? I need to know what happened when they were mixing the classrooms. Man, all type of shit, bro. I mean, you dealing with, first of all, you dealing, first of all, that school, the school is, trust me, that school was like-

• 56:30Speaker 01

  It was dangerous, man. Okay? And maybe I was, you know, I was naive, but part of the fucking danger. At the end of the day, right, running with, you know, running with the, with the, with the. But yo, like, like, like, soon as from that school, you know, they made the paper.

• 56:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And not, and not in a good way.

• 56:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? You know, like, like, so, just don't shoot in here, shoot in here, death here, death here, death here. So, so, there's two things that's happening. One, you're dealing with poverty and oppression in communities. Two, you're dealing with now taking this, these communities, this, this, this, and you stuffing all this fucking energy in one place. You got some motherfuckers that ain't playing with a full deck. They up in there too.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? You got girls that's up in there too, they, they, they, and they, they, they loose and it's, it's too much shit, bro.

• 57:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  And then you got teachers that don't care. I did have one teacher that did care, right? I had two that cared, but this one teacher, I never forget, I, I, I forgot his name, but I won't forget his, his, his moment. I was scientifically advanced. Right? My ideas about science was like, you know what I mean? And they, they, they want, they, they, they wanted to send me to, um, Stuyvesant.

• 57:47Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know what I mean? It's like I was there.

• 57:51Speaker 00

  For anybody who's not from New York City, Stuyvesant is like the elite of elite schools in the city that you have to test into and like,

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:58Speaker 00

  I mean, I didn't get close.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, me neither.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  There's Stuyvesant, then there's Brooklyn Tech and Bronx Science. And those are the three, like, most elite educations you can get in New York City, outside of going to some fancy private school. And even a fancy private school, I don't know if the education's gonna be as like competitive as a Stuyvesant.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and, and, but I just started playing hooky. Hmm.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Really?

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 00

  So the teacher sees you and he's like, alright, this kid is is actually really sharp.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:27Speaker 00

  We have to do something to harness this energy. We gotta get him out of here.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:30Speaker 00

  Because there's a direction he can go here.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Send him over there. And then and then my drama teacher, I'll do him his name, Mr. Greenberg.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  He he realized that I had this type of, uh, like, like, the the the thugs was was listening to me.

• 58:48Speaker 00

  Oh, so you had like a leadership quality?

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, the skinny dude got all the big motherfuckers fucking with him.

• 58:55Speaker 00

  Hmm hmm.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Right? And so he realized that. He's like, they keep gravitating. But I was I was kind of, my knowledge was was was ahead, you know what I mean?

• 59:02Speaker 00

  So does he pull you aside and say something?

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's like, okay, I want you guys to perform at the school, uh, at the school play, you know, whatever, the big school performance this year. Right? And, you know, I'm gonna pass all of y'all, basically, if you guys do this. And motherfuckers, he says, and I want you to, um, kind of lead it, right? So I get the team together, right? And I put together, um, uh, an idea that we're gonna do like a, we're gonna be preachers and we're gonna do a sermon and we're gonna do all this shit, right? And, uh, and it's kind of cool. And we do it for the teacher. We rehearse it. And he's like, you know, he's like, you, um, yeah, it's it's gonna work.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  The day of, nobody shows up.

• 59:49Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  All the, but these are, trust me, these are thugs, bro. They're not getting on that stage, bro.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  That's how, like, the fear of talking to public is greater than the feel of shooting people in the street.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Yo, know what?

• 1:00:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Speaker 00

  Isn't that crazy, though?

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  But what happens is that, so, but this is what I learned from this.

• 1:00:09Speaker 00

  That's great. Wait, do you still do it, though?

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Well, no. Check it out. That's what I learned. I get there and it's a slot. And Mr. Greenberg is like, I'm like, nobody's here. He's like, go do it yourself.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  I'm like, he says, go do it yourself. And he walks away. And the slot is coming, like, it's like 20 minutes of the slot. I'm like. Like, what the fuck? Like, I'm thinking about it. And then, I go sit in the fucking audience, bro.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  And when the time comes, guess what happens? The curtain opens, and fucking Mr. Greenberg is there by himself. And he pissed on the fucking greatest improvisation I ever seen in my fucking life. He's using different voices, he's doing all types of shit, bro. I mean, blowing my fucking brain. And I was like, holy shit. And I learned from that moment, that Joe, bro, just do it.

• 1:01:07Speaker 00

  Just do it.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Just do it.

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  No doubt.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  I left school. I never went back to that school.

• 1:01:13Speaker 00

  After that moment?

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  After that moment, bro. Because this is like towards the spring, getting closer to summer, fuck school.

• 1:01:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  I'm just saying.

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  You can't learn in the spring, bro.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  The weather. Parks open.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  I'll go to Forty Second Street, sit in the fucking theater. Then they started, then you get arrested.

• 1:01:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Back in those days, there was arresting motherfuckers. Me and Dirty was in the back of Truant vans, weekly, bro.

• 1:01:41Mark Gagnon?

  Forty second, you still rough back in.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  You think about this shit.

• 1:01:45Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, I probably robbed.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  I gotta think about, where the fuck is the, uh, the system at, right? I guess the system is that, the system is, uh, penal.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  The system is more penal than.

• 1:01:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what it is.

• 1:02:00Speaker 00

  It's not trying to create opportunity or?

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  It's penal.

• 1:02:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  So anyway, but yeah, I don't know how we got to all that shit, we going out some.

• 1:02:07Speaker 00

  So anyway, so what do you do? So you, you leave school, you don't go back?

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  I leave school.

• 1:02:10Speaker 00

  Is, do you leave out of like guilt or shame, or do you leave just out of like?

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Both.

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  Interesting, so you did feel?

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  No, I felt fucked up, that I, I felt fucked up, that I didn't stand up for the moment. I felt even more fucked up, but yet I was inspired that, wait. Because I never even seen my teacher do this shit, bro.

• 1:02:27Speaker 00

  So you saw a different side of him and you're like?

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. In fact, he, he always said, like, his claim to fame was that he was invited, I don't know if it was the Grammys or the Oscars, but he did something, that, that he got an invitation to California, whatever that was. And that was like his claim to fame, he's, he's just a Brooklyn school teacher, white man, green eyes. Uh, um, kinda looked like, uh, kinda had a little bit of oversized Hackman in him. Little jeans, a little Jean Hackman, cause they have a little Jean Hackman in him and shit. Uh, Mr. Greenberg, that's, and you know, you don't even believe his story.

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Like, yo, I was, you know, I've been, he's an English teacher and a drama teacher.

• 1:03:15Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Hmm. But when he did that, I believed him.

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And I-

• 1:03:21Mark Gagnon?

  Sorry. Did he do a rendition of like your play or he just freestyled?

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  Yo, he just freestyled, bro. He did, he did voices, he did Abbott Costello shit. Yo, this dude was good, bro. He was killing it, I'm telling you. I was like, holy shit. Uh, but then, like I said, I kinda whipped it out of there, didn't go back to class. I was smoking weed already by then anyway, so just know that, which was sad. I don't smoke weed now, thank you. But I was, you know, just ran with my man Scientific, shout out to Scientific. This dude Scientific, yo, it's, it's another guy who taught me something. Let me tell you what he taught me. So now, um, towards, this, this is like all the same, like last two months of that, of me being at this school. I'm getting out of here, okay? I'm leaving. But, but Scientific, he know never come to school anyway.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  But it's me and him, another brother, General Born, and some other brothers and shit. And, you know, you know, we who we are. Now, but nobody's really coming to school that much but me. Right? And then this is big giant motherfucker, bro. That, I don't know how I got into a beef with this nigga, bro. But this nigga had it out for me. He had to be seventeen, bro. Or either from the special ed side or something, bro. This dude, yo, this dude. You know what I mean? I did not have the confidence to fight this dude. You know what I mean? I'm twelve going on thirteen, right? Thirteen whatever, going on fourteen maybe, whatever, whatever. I didn't have it.

• 1:04:46Speaker 00

  You're not fighting a seventeen year old. You're not fighting a young man.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  And not, and he was, he was, yo, and, and his physical appearance. You know what I mean? Like some dudes like, yo, they, they look like it.

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  He got the size and he got the fucking look.

• 1:05:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  And he just was like, yo, after school, you know what I mean? It's gonna do me in and shit. And, uh, yeah, I had to duck out early that day. You know what I mean? And, um, and when I did, I ducked out. I went to my man Scientific neighborhood. Scientific was selling weed and all that, so he was already swinging. And, uh, I caught up with him. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yo, you know, yo, this, this, yo, um, no, in fact, no. I caught up with him, I didn't tell him. Somebody else told him.

• 1:05:36Speaker 00

  Oh, that you had to fight and then you weren't there?

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  So you pull up with Scientific. Scientific's like, yo, why aren't you?

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm like this, right? Scientific is up here to me.

• 1:05:44Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  At the time. He's like Joe Pesky type shit.

• 1:05:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  The giant dude is up here.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Okay? And, and Scientific comes to school. He don't never come to school. He's, he comes to school the next day, bro.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  And comes to my class and everything. And then, you know, come to class, we get out the class. And he say, hold on, who, who was it? I said, oh. He said, oh, him? Yeah, come on. Walked over, grabbed this motherfucker by the collar, brought him, smacked him twice. Pow, pow, pow. Do you ever fuck with Rakim? My name was Rakim then. You ever fuck with Rakim again? Yo, you know, you know, he my son. That's my son.

• 1:06:31Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  I was inspired like a motherfucker. Like that was, that was a David Goliath moment for real, yo. And I, and I, and I took heed to that. Like, like, like, like, two things. One, it's great to have somebody that's championing with you.

• 1:06:50Speaker 00

  Oh, hell, yeah.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? No, nobody takes over nothing. You know, no general, no, no king takes over the country without good generals. You know what I mean? No general takes over without good soldiers. You know what I mean? So that's vital. Um, and, and, and then you gotta know when to be the general, when to be the soldier. You know what I mean? I was a general at that time too, because yo, he just did that for me.

• 1:07:15Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  No reward, no return. He just, don't fuck with him. Yo, somebody just told me this the other day.

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Uh, um, okay, I'mma shout you out. What's up, Ellis? So Ellis, he's Method Man's manager. He just told me a story that he never told me. Uh, he's proud of us being in the Rockville Hall of Fame. And he just told me about some shit that was going down in the hood back in the day. Where, um, you know, some dudes had it out for me. It was just a little neighborhood war shit.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  But he told them not, they came to get him to join the fight.

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  Against you?

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he told them nah.

• 1:07:58Speaker 00

  Math or Ellis?

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Ellis.

• 1:08:00Speaker 00

  Ellis said, no, I'm not doing it.

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  He said, nah, that guy especially is gonna be a star.

• 1:08:04Speaker 00

  How old are you at this time?

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  Maybe eighteen now. Maybe seventeen, eighteen.

• 1:08:08Speaker 00

  And so this beef is potentially very dangerous beef?

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, at that time, yeah.

• 1:08:14Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he, uh, he just told me that. He just shared, he never shared it with me. He just shared this with me like after the Rockville Hall of Fame announcement. He said, yo, I'mma tell you something I never told you. Yeah.

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  Like, he saw that, he saw that I was trying, that I was striving. And I had, I had an energy, you know what I mean? So, I think that's one of my blessings in life. Is that, is that sometime, sometime there's always one amongst you that is the Noah. He's the one. He's the one that could build the ark.

• 1:08:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  He's the one that could guide you out. You know what I mean? Um, and I just put it all on myself. I think me and my brother Devon would be kinda like, we become, we become, we become the Moses and Aaron of our community. We become that Moses and Aaron that's able to... If you look at Wu, there's a lot of people that comes out. It ain't like two. You know what I mean? It's, it's, it ain't even just the ten. Right? It's, it's, it's hundreds all reality. But even on the artist side, you start going to Sons of Man, Royal U-Fam, Killer Army, Black Knights, North Star, Cream Team. Um, I could keep going. Uh, TMF, you know what I mean? Like, you could keep going. GP, like, you could keep going. Right?

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  Everybody had a chance for a better day. Everybody had a chance for like, yo, you know what I mean, we could do this. You know what I mean? And I don't care if it's thirty, forty grand, fifty, sixty grand a year.

• 1:09:45Speaker 00

  Better than nothing.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Exactly, it's a chance, you know, and some of them is hundreds of thousands.

• 1:09:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  You know what I mean, so, so that, that, so, so, so, so that, I take that blessing in my life to be, to be, uh, what they call the abbot, and I probably was even the abbot back in junior high school.

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  I probably was the abbot in high school, not even conscious of it, not identifying it. And, and doing all the negative shit, even in the negative world, I mean, it was like twenty-two people in my crew, bro.

• 1:10:15Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. You know what I mean? But I was leading them to nothing. Like, he got shot, he got shot, he got shot. Wow. But then in the positive side, yo, everything turns around, families are, families, communities are better.

• 1:10:29Speaker 00

  Did, did any of the negative stuff follow you into the positive side? How long before that subsided? Like, were you concerned as you guys are on this rise to superstardom that some fuck shit from back in the day was gonna catch?

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  I mean. Yeah, yeah. Wu-Tang. They were involved with a lot of. Yeah, I mean, yo, you heard about the fucking, uh, the Del, the Delphonics come to do a song with the Wu-Tang Clan? You know who the Delphonics are? Philly soul group.

• 1:10:56Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Really or not, here I come. They, they, like, we big fans of their shit, right?

• 1:11:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Ghostface, oh, he loves it, loves it. And, and, and, and William Hart, Major Harris, Major Harris is the one who made the song, uh, "Time won't let me wait," the one that Luther Brant did over, um, anyway, these are big soul songs for us, right? They come visit us to do a song, and then somebody like, yo, let's do a pizza run, I don't know, a piece of blunts and forties and some paper. I didn't go, I had to stay in the studio, I'm working on the track and shit. Come back, man, the van got shot up.

• 1:11:33Speaker 00

  No way.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, buses, and they, they was like, hey, man, don't worry about the blood, we, we seen all that shit in Philly. Wow. But, I'm just saying, it, it, of course.

• 1:11:43Speaker 00

  The element of danger was there.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  All right, guys, you see the light, you know what time it is, all right? You know what time it is, BlueChew got a new product.

• 1:11:53Speaker 00

  Your girl's getting dug out. Andy Dufresne. Andy Dufresne. The man crawled through shit for freedom. You don't gotta do it.

• 1:12:05Mark Gagnon?

  I thought you were talking about that Epstein victim. I'm like, what's going on?

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

  Oh, come on. How do you always make it bad? How do you always find it's a comment Shawshank Redemption?

• 1:12:14Mark Gagnon?

  Fuck your bitch to death.

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  Jesus Shawshank Redemption.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  Bring that up and add about Blue True. That's crazy.

• 1:12:21Speaker 00

  Doesn't your shit go to the left a little bit? That's the Shank part.

• 1:12:26Speaker 00

  Yo Shawshank Redemption your girl, man. She deserves it. Stop being selfish. It's not just about you. We know you're gonna finish. Okay? What you can do is with Blue True Gold, you're hard within 15 minutes. Ain't no way in 30 minutes anymore. You might not have 30 minutes of chit chat. You might talk yourself out of some pussy in 30 minutes. That could happen.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  And then you just rock hard and alone.

• 1:12:53Speaker 00

  Rock hard and alone. What are you gonna do? Fuck covers. You gonna wrap them covers up? No, we're not gonna talk about it. We're gonna talk about what you're gonna do to that girl because there's 15 minutes left. You got 15 minutes of chit chat. I used to have a little story that I would tell.

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:13:07Speaker 00

  When I didn't have anything to say. And I told it to a girl twice by accident.

• 1:13:14Speaker 00

  She told me, she's like, you already told me that story. I was like, listen, man. I got another 26 minutes. Like, I ran out of material. Okay? We got to do it.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  But now with Gold, it's faster.

• 1:13:25Speaker 00

  15 minutes. 15 minutes. That's nothing. Light work. And you're gonna get... You buy two months of Blue True Gold, you're gonna get your third for free with the promo code FLAGRANT. That's promo code FLAGRANT. Visit bluetwo.com for more details and important safety information. Your girl should share all that safety information.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  It could be dangerous. It could be treacherous.

• 1:13:48Speaker 00

  It's treacherous.

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  Wanna know how I got these scars? That's Cut that out.

• 1:13:54Speaker 00

  Stop watching movies, Lee. Stop watching. Did you know he was referencing?

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  Shawshank Redemption, bro. Come on. Come on.

• 1:14:03Speaker 00

  Joker. You wanna know how I got these stars?

• 1:14:06Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:14:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, Dark Knight.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 1:14:11Speaker 00

  We thank YouTube for sponsoring this podcast.

• 1:14:13Mark Gagnon?

  What is going on?

• 1:14:14Speaker 00

  This episode has also been brought to you by Talkspace. Guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys. There was a time where people were like, I don't know if I'm gonna use Talkspace because I wanna make sure I meet my therapist in person. Data, that doesn't happen anymore. Your therapist doesn't have an office. Your therapist is Zooming. Everything is on Zoom. And Talkspace was ahead of the curve. Covid changed everything. Now everything is Talkspace. So you might as well use Talkspace, the number one rated online therapy, bringing you professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatrists that you can access anytime, anywhere. It's easy.

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  Talkspace makes getting the help you need easy, accessible, and affordable. Plus, most insured members have a $0 copay. So what you're gonna do right now, as a listener of this podcast, you're gonna get $80 off your first month with Talkspace when you go to talkspace.com/flagrant and enter the promo code SPACE80. That's S-P-A-C-E-8-0. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to talkspace.com/flagrant and enter the promo code SPACE80. Now, let's get back to the show. Guys, in the spirit of New York, a great New Yorker, RZA, the RZA on the podcast, Bobby Dej. Um, I wish that we got to talk about our New York Knicks.

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  You think he's a Knicks fan?

• 1:16:11Speaker 00

  What do you mean? There's no choice to be anything but.

• 1:16:14Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't know. He lived in Ohio for a little bit, he lived in Charlotte for a little bit.

• 1:16:19Speaker 00

  What's coursing through his veins?

• 1:16:20Speaker 02

  From Brooklyn, he grew up, born in Brownsville.

• 1:16:23Speaker 00

  What's coursing through his veins?

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:16:27Speaker 00

  It's the New York Knicks.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  It's the Knicks.

• 1:16:29Speaker 00

  Maybe.

• 1:16:29Speaker 02

  Dolan's all in that.

• 1:16:32Speaker 00

  God.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  Why are you trying to do that? Where are we going right now?

• 1:16:35Speaker 00

  He's a good guy. I still got playoffs I wanna go to.

• 1:16:41Speaker 00

  No, in all seriousness, Knicks taking this series.

• 1:16:45Speaker 00

  By the time this comes out, cuz we're recording this Tuesday. Game tonight.

• 1:16:50Speaker 02

  We'll be up.

• 1:16:51Speaker 00

  We'll be up 3-2.

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:52Speaker 00

  We'll be up 3-2 and then I think, what did the chance, what do we have at the, uh, winning the series? Is that 69%? What does the calc have it at, 69%?

• 1:17:00Speaker 02

  69%.

• 1:17:01Speaker 00

  So it's light, it's light, it's light.

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  I mean, it's picked up from last week. Last week we were looking at this and the odds were like, you know, 16 or something?

• 1:17:08Mark Gagnon?

  No.

• 1:17:09Speaker 00

  No, no, don't be crazy.

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  10?

• 1:17:10Speaker 00

  You're talking out the side of your face. You're talking out the side of your face right now. Talking out the side of your face.

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  That's not a thing.

• 1:17:17Speaker 00

  Yo, cut that off.

• 1:17:18Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  I understand.

• 1:17:20Speaker 00

  Cut that off.

• 1:17:21Speaker 02

  Can we put the Magic's odds? Cuz I don't know if you guys have been seeing, but, uh, the, the boys down in Orlando have been cooking. I mean, they just won against Detroit.

• 1:17:27Speaker 00

  Ain't nobody give a fuck about the Orlando Magic, son.

• 1:17:30Speaker 02

  Detroit's the first seed.

• 1:17:31Speaker 00

  Look at the volume on it.

• 1:17:35Speaker 00

  Go, go look at the volume on it.

• 1:17:36Mark Gagnon?

  You got 24% chance of winning.

• 1:17:38Speaker 02

  A mill, bro, a million.

• 1:17:39Speaker 00

  1.7, right?

• 1:17:41Speaker 02

  1.7.

• 1:17:41Speaker 00

  Alright, go look at the volume on the Knicks.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  Okay, what do we got?

• 1:17:47Mark Gagnon?

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 1:17:48Speaker 02

  1.8?

• 1:17:52Speaker 00

  Nah, something gotta be off. Something gotta be off.

• 1:17:55Speaker 02

  Nah, bro, if you wanna, if you wanna make some money, you gotta, you gotta back up the Orlando Magic, I'm telling you.

• 1:17:59Speaker 00

  Damn, I guess they're gambling like that.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  They're the 8 seed, they're the 8 seed.

• 1:18:03Speaker 00

  Cuz there's nothing to do, there's nothing to do over there.

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  Bro.

• 1:18:06Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Speaker 00

  I think it's more of a boredom thing.

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:18:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:09Speaker 02

  No, cuz they got, they got money, they're, they're, you know, they know how to make a come up.

• 1:18:13Speaker 00

  How do they find time to watch the games in between like cheerleading conferences?

• 1:18:18Speaker 02

  Okay, there is a lot of cheerleading conferences.

• 1:18:20Speaker 00

  Like, how do they do it?

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  There is a lot.

• 1:18:22Speaker 00

  There's so many cheerleading conferences.

• 1:18:24Speaker 02

  That second screen viewing right there, you just pull up on the side.

• 1:18:26Speaker 00

  While you're watching a cheerleading conference.

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  Howard just fucking put up 20, yeah. Kinda nice, I mean, Cade Cunningham had 25, he coughed it up eight times. All right, then this is your angle, or sorry, not that part. This might be the most fraudulent first seed we've seen in a minute. I mean, you're telling me you win 60 games, you can't score for five minutes in the playoff?

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  Punchlines, this is your style. Detroit plays like a team that just discovered the playoffs are harder.

• 1:18:52Speaker 02

  Right? I mean, come on, bro. Hote clipped us, or cut that part. If Orlando wins the series, it's gonna be the one of worst collapses for a first seed since the modern playoff history. This is career altering for Trey Young and the Hawks.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  It's smack.

• 1:19:04Speaker 00

  You know the worst collapse in history is, I think it was your grandma's rectum in that bunker.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  No, I actually cut all that stuff out.

• 1:19:13Speaker 00

  During World War II.

• 1:19:14Speaker 02

  Cut all the stuff out.

• 1:19:15Speaker 00

  Remember, remember when her rectum collapsed?

• 1:19:18Speaker 02

  I can't put this in, bro. My nephew's been watching the show.

• 1:19:20Speaker 00

  Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  What's the odds on your grandma?

• 1:19:24Speaker 02

  No, that's not a cussing, that's not a cussing. Okay, the closer line. Detroit's season went from more contenders to where a documentary.

• 1:19:30Speaker 00

  Anyway, let's get back to the show.

• 1:19:33Speaker 04

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• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  In that early crew, who was the funniest one? Like, especially when you were like growing up, like middle school, high school, is there someone that sticks out you're like, yo, he was the funniest guy?

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  I mean, Dirty's the funniest, bro.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  Dirty is so, Dirty's the type of dude, bro. I don't know, you know, he got children and all that, but know that your pops the type of nigga, yo,

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  that wrapped a paper towel around his dick, cause he didn't have a condom.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  Put a dish rag on his shit, bro.

• 1:20:40Mark Gagnon?

  He might have been in the other school.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Put a dish rag on that shit, bro. Bro.

• 1:20:46Mark Gagnon?

  Yo, that is.

• 1:20:49Mark Gagnon?

  I always wondered.

• 1:20:52Speaker 02

  That's super absorption there, that might work. I've seen the commercials. I've seen the commercials, bro. Nothing drips when they hold it up. That's the brawny promise.

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  We came from fucking, I told Joe Rogan this story the other day, but I say he was the ultimate, ultimate, uh, ultimate expression of freedom. In fact, I'll tell you a different story. Yo, the dude, the dude fucking takes the car, like, yo, I wanna, like, yo, chill, we making a song. We got, we got the blue mansion, we got the studio in the basement, them whole Marley Mar thing, right? We got ours. Alright, so let's, you know, let's make some song. Alright, alright, I just gotta run to this, run out and do something. And, yeah, I think I know what he had, a BM, whatever the fuck he had.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  Goes out, tears the car up, crashes, comes back, asks for somebody else's car, let me get another.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Yo, he gets it though.

• 1:21:54Mark Gagnon?

  No, who gives him the car?

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Me.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  Of course, of course, of course it's me, right? Yo, doesn't make it out the driveway.

• 1:22:05Mark Gagnon?

  Another one.

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  Now, mind you, the driveway is a little back cave shit.

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Give us some justification. The driveway, bro, is going to the back cave. It's like this. It's like, the driveway is at least three New York City blocks. We live, the houses in the fucking woods. Batman shit, alright? So, there's a chance at high speed going out.

• 1:22:31Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, he's clipping something.

• 1:22:32Speaker 02

  What kind of car are we talking?

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  Um, first he fucked up the BM. I think for me it was my Range Rover.

• 1:22:38Mark Gagnon?

  Okay, so he fucks up that one.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, then he wanted another one. But somebody came and got him instead. Now the big idea, where the fuck was he going?

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  Nowhere.

• 1:22:52Speaker 00

  Did he ever say where he was going?

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  Yo, what you call him, uh, rest in peace to 12 o'clock? So, so there was this dude that would give us, get us cars. Like, you know, you could buy them, right? Like, first of all, to be honest with you, we don't got a license, bro.

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  We sitting on a half a dozen cars with no license.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  Let's just keep it real. This is real power. Find his form. Yo, I don't got, I didn't get a license to like, oh, oh, two, oh, three.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  Straight up, I got my license like in California or some shit when I'm with my new wife.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  I don't drive now at all. But 12 tells me Dirk just got the new Benz.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  This is, uh, he's happy. Now, he is the type of dude that he, he, he, like, he drives like a maniac, bro.

• 1:23:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  I'm not here for this, so all I can do is describe what somebody told me. On the BQE.

• 1:23:56Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  He crashes the car. The car flips upside down, bro.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  Dirk gets out and just leaves. And left, 12 o'clock is in the car still.

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  Just upside down.

• 1:24:16Speaker 00

  He just left, bro. What happened to the other dude?

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  He's, he's, he's, he's.

• 1:24:22Speaker 00

  He got out, he's alright.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  But he was like, yo, the nigga just left and went to try to get another fucking car.

• 1:24:27Speaker 00

  No way, no way.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  I'm not exaggerating this shit, bro.

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  12 is just upside down like, yo.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  I was like, I was, cause I was like, yo, what the fuck?

• 1:24:38Speaker 01

  I was like, what the fuck happened?

• 1:24:39Speaker 00

  Take off my seatbelt, Lee.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  And yo, you want to. Six o'clock.

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  Let me, let me, let me digress to something. So, anyway, first of all, thank you for inviting me.

• 1:24:48Speaker 00

  Dude, of course.

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  I'm doing, I'm doing a big press run for my new film.

• 1:24:52Speaker 00

  Oh, no, I want to talk all about the film.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  I know, no, I watched it last night, by the way. It's like, the reason why I'm bringing it up is because my character is named Unique.

• 1:25:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  And ODB name is Asun Unique.

• 1:25:03Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  So I named the character after him.

• 1:25:06Speaker 00

  That's awesome.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  And there is a scene in the movie where the car is upside down.

• 1:25:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  But this time, this guy helps.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  So a point being made is like, like, like, like my love for, for my cousin, uh, and for him. Uh, I'm glad that my, that I'm able to be an artist, that I could find ways to inject.

• 1:25:29Speaker 00

  Real life stuff.

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  Real life stuff. And I make it magical, of course. But, you know, ODB's older brother name is Ramsey. That's why my story is unique and it's Ramsey. And my older brother name is Randy. And that's why his government name is Randy.

• 1:25:47Speaker 00

  So the, yeah, you said that ODB is the ultimate expression of freedom.

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:53Speaker 00

  Is that the magnetism of him?

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 1:25:56Speaker 00

  Cause I remember, I mean, I'm sure you remember the moment where it's like, it, it was like MTV was obsessed with him. He had crossed over too. And I don't know if you could write, not you, of course you could, but like the average person, I don't know if they could just write down why they love this guy.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:12Speaker 00

  But it was a visceral reaction before you could like game algorithm and like promote something like, I don't even know if MTV was going, is this the right thing to promote?

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:24Speaker 00

  It didn't even matter.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  Right. It didn't matter.

• 1:26:27Speaker 00

  You could make the argument that he was doing everything for them not to promote him. And it was working.

• 1:26:32Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:26:33Speaker 00

  It was like true rock star shit.

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:37Speaker 00

  And not rock star and like the contrived version where you've seen rock stars try to pretend to be rock stars.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:43Speaker 00

  Like, okay, like my forefathers, you know, put all the furniture in the hotel room on the ceilings. I'm gonna do that.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 1:26:49Speaker 00

  It, you, it was like watching something that didn't know how to exist in any other way, shape or form.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. He, bro, yeah, talking about hotels.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  I was just saying, yo, bro.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  You know how many hotels got destroyed by this?

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  Even, yo, I remember Steve, this Wu-Tang ain't even popular yet, bro. They, they, they invited us to the, uh, whatever, the BMG conference or some shit. And they trying to like convince the executives that this is the new group.

• 1:27:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  They gonna be this, they gonna be that. The single was doing well, but put money on these guys, right? And fucking, we go there and they want us to perform in front of them. And we do, first of all, Dirty starts the performance off and just breaks it to Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  Okay, so that's to give you, but. That night, yo, this is great. No, serious, bro, but that night. What is, what are these execs, what are these execs in suits thinking? That's what I'm saying. But forget that, but then that night, bro. And I'm not gonna act like I wasn't part of it. Like, cause I can sit there and like, talk about him, but it's still, I'm gonna give him the ring leader role of this.

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  Bro, I don't know what made him get the idea. I don't know if because, cause maybe like the girl was in that room or this or whatever, you know, groupies or whatever. But he was like, yo, yo, God, I got this fire hydrant. Right, uh, fire extinguisher. Yeah, yeah. Say, yo, look at this shit. You hit one puff and it like, it does, it does this. He's like, yo, let's go hit niggas rooms.

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  Yo.

• 1:28:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did it.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  Did it.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  They would open the door, he would light up the whole room. Yo, just like boom, boom.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  Or even, you could put it like, right there and push it through. And then put it through. Whoa. Wait. But now.

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  I mean, everybody would see it, Meth was super heated. He had, he had a dime piece in there probably back then, I don't know.

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  But, you know, I don't know.

• 1:29:08Speaker 02

  Just opens the door covered.

• 1:29:11Speaker 01

  First of all, you don't realize that that stuff is not easy to come off. Yeah, yeah. Fire extinguisher shit. Fire retarded. Yeah, you gotta basically throw that couch away. Just ruin the whole, the hotel. And so now Steve Mepha gotta get this bill.

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  And he didn't complain then, he just, he talks about it now, like, you don't know, you fucking got, like, you guys, like, the, like, we had the chairman of BMG there, bro. And, and they fucking came with this fucking bill for Wu-Tang Clan. He's like, he had to convince them. It was gonna be worth it. Yeah. He was right. He actually said, he might've said like, they're, they're rock stars. He might've used that as a fucking slogan unintentionally, but, um, and here we are in a rock and roll.

• 1:29:59Mark Gagnon?

  That's fire.

• 1:30:00Speaker 00

  Wow. It's just, yeah.

• 1:30:02Mark Gagnon?

  I always wondered, like, in the 90s, everybody's trying to be like gangster and all that type of stuff. Why did ODB choose Old Dirty Bastard for his name?

• 1:30:11Speaker 01

  Well, um, I gave him that name because all of, most of our names come from, inspired by Kung Fu movies one way or another.

• 1:30:20Mark Gagnon?

  Okay.

• 1:30:20Speaker 01

  So there was a, you know, in Kung Fu, one of you guys, you're watching, but they always, you old dirty bastard. They, they, they always say that.

• 1:30:27Speaker 00

  Oh, that's the translation, that's the dubbed over.

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a dubbed, dubbed, dubbed over version. And then, and then there was the, um, the, and the drunk master was always considered the old dirty bastard. And old dirty did the drunken style. I was gonna say my style, I do the drunken style. I mean, he could get, he could drink ten forties and still get on the microphone and bust your ass.

• 1:30:44Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  And he actually gave Raekwon the name, the chef. Raekwon had his name, but Dirty was like, nah, he's the chef. He, he's the only one that kind of like, uh, that, that Dirt actually gave that title. Raekwon was Raekwon, but.

• 1:30:59Speaker 00

  The chef. Why'd he, why'd he make him the chef?

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  I feel like it was for two reasons. One, from the movie, The Mystery of Chess Boxing, there's a character called the chef that ends up teaching the student, but you don't, you don't know the chef could kill and kick ass.

• 1:31:13Mark Gagnon?

  Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think that was one of the reasons. And also, you know.

• 1:31:18Speaker 00

  You need to pour this, by the way.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, Cooking Up Marvelous Styles. Yeah, we'll pour, I'll pour yours and you pour mine.

• 1:31:22Speaker 00

  Fair enough.

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  Cooking Up Marvelous Styles. So that's why you got the chef. Of course, Ghostface Killer from the movie, Mr. Chess Boxing, Ghostface Killer.

• 1:31:31Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Everybody wanted that name, though.

• 1:31:33Mark Gagnon?

  Mm.

• 1:31:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was it.

• 1:31:35Mark Gagnon?

  That was a hot, that was a hot. After the fire extinguisher, everyone was Ghostface.

• 1:31:42Mark Gagnon?

  Didn't he break out of prison one time to go perform with y'all in New York?

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, not, not break out of prison.

• 1:31:47Speaker 00

  A rehab facility or something?

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  They was looking for him.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  And he fucking left and he showed up at the Hammerstein Ballroom in disguise.

• 1:31:59Speaker 02

  What was he disguised as?

• 1:32:01Speaker 01

  With the doody hat on.

• 1:32:03Speaker 00

  Cheers.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Cheers.

• 1:32:04Speaker 00

  Cheers.

• 1:32:05Speaker 01

  Cheers.

• 1:32:06Speaker 00

  Cheers. Mark, you want a little?

• 1:32:08Speaker 02

  I'll get a glass if someone.

• 1:32:09Speaker 00

  Miles, can we get one more glass in for?

• 1:32:11Speaker 02

  But you gotta start, you gotta start.

• 1:32:13Speaker 00

  Okay, so the Hammerstein Ballroom.

• 1:32:16Speaker 02

  He's in disguise, he pulls up, he probably still has like a medical bracelet on or something.

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  Yo, he, that was a weird night.

• 1:32:25Speaker 00

  I bet.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  There was something beautiful about it though.

• 1:32:30Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:32:31Speaker 01

  Because he was there. And he wanted to be there.

• 1:32:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And I was so happy, I kinda, but I don't like how I reacted that night. Like I think, like, I think I did it, I think I was wrong that night.

• 1:32:45Speaker 00

  Why would you?

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  I think I was like too happy and too in the moment of the brand and too in the moment of the visual look of it. That I didn't really take the consideration of the danger that my cousin was in.

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I was too much being a fucking avid executive type motherfucker.

• 1:33:07Speaker 00

  Chasing the success and what this event would be and how amazing this would be received.

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I was fucked up in that because I saw the footage of it and I do, he said, nah, I can't stay long.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  Like I can't, like, and I was like, you know, I'm like, oh, we got done. Man, fuck all that shit, bro, this shit is serious and I just, that, that was, I think that was, I think that's been a few of my, I'm gonna speak my, I think that's a few of my flaws is that

• 1:33:36Speaker 01

  the, the, uh, the, the

• 1:33:42Speaker 01

  like, the, the small humanness of it. The small human compassion of the moment. I may sacrifice that for the bigger picture.

• 1:33:53Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  Then you gotta say is the bigger picture worth it?

• 1:33:59Speaker 00

  I mean hindsight is 2020 or whatever the cliche is like it's easy to look back as someone who's achieved all the things and go, oh, I wish I did those little moments differently. But that perspective also might have allowed you to have 100 people escape poverty and you know, live their dreams.

• 1:34:18Speaker 01

  Somebody said that, I'm glad you said that, Tarantino said that to me one day, he said, uh, cause one day I really was really like, I don't know, I felt like going back, it was shit happening and I just felt like, I don't know, maybe I should fucking do something, you know? And he was like, ah, come here, sit down, let me pour you a drink. Oh, actually he said, I'll make you a margarita. So he makes me a margarita, I was making a margarita. He makes me a margarita. And he did say this to me and I'm, cause now I'm taking back, I'm not taking back what I, what I, what I felt wrong at, cause I did, I do realize that for the W,

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  my sacrifice, yo, I wouldn't even, like if my, my moms wanted to come, no.

• 1:35:03Speaker 02

  Why?

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  Because I felt like what we do, what we was doing was just too much and too that for her.

• 1:35:11Speaker 00

  Well, that's being protective of your mom.

• 1:35:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, out of respect for her almost.

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't, I didn't want her to see me jumping up cursing like that either.

• 1:35:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, now I'm sure as a parent, you're like,

• 1:35:22Speaker 00

  one of my kids has achieved something that.

• 1:35:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's Moses.

• 1:35:25Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, it's like almost nobody in history has achieved and I just kind of want to witness it.

• 1:35:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:30Speaker 00

  She don't care if you're cursing, bro. She knows your curse words.

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  I was wrong about that. But then also, like me and my siblings been talking and it's just like, at one point, if you wasn't woo, bro, you couldn't see me.

• 1:35:42Speaker 00

  Really?

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:43Speaker 00

  It was that tight?

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  Bro, I, bro, I was so engaged, you know?

• 1:35:49Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  So I'm, I'm serious. I mean, my first house, I remember myself, I bought my first house to Cleveland, which was, I was, I would drive by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame all the time too. So it's blessing to be in there. But I bought that house, whoa, that's.

• 1:36:02Speaker 00

  That's wild.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's crazy. But I bought that house to move my woman and child to Ohio so that the Staten Island house can be the studio and I stayed there.

• 1:36:15Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  Okay, and I stayed there. I'm talking like months and funk and and Liquid Swords and Cuban Links, bro. It's like when Ray Kwan said with the boots that paved the way, nigga, I didn't change my shoes, bro. He was like, yo, these niggas wearing that same, you wearing them same sits for two years, Abbott. Like, so, so I'm just saying that that I'm not knocking it. I'm just saying when you think about those moments like Dirty on Stage, his life is on the line in all reality. And I'm like.

• 1:36:50Speaker 00

  The woo is more important than this moment.

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and what happened the next two days later?

• 1:36:55Speaker 00

  He gets put back.

• 1:36:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I could, I didn't even get, like, I didn't even get, like, my love for him is, is, is, is like, and the Bible says, David and Nathan. I don't know if you read the Bible.

• 1:37:09Speaker 00

  I don't know about David and Nathan, but.

• 1:37:11Speaker 01

  But you know, there's a story in the Bible, it's like, the reason why David lives and while he doesn't kill Saul to become the king, because Saul's son was Nathan and he was, you know, the prince.

• 1:37:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:25Speaker 01

  But David is about to become the king.

• 1:37:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  Over this nigga's father, right? But be, but their love was so strong, like their spiritual love, like it wasn't the, I mean, some people try to misinterpret that shit, I don't know. But it was, it was their spiritual love was just like, yo, that's my man.

• 1:37:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:42Speaker 01

  That's it, yo. And they was like this. And, and that, they was, and that love was so strong that it helped David become the king. You see what I mean?

• 1:37:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  And so I'm saying, me and Asan was like, so.

• 1:37:55Speaker 00

  Severing that love wouldn't allow him to be the king that he needed to be.

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so with Asan, it's just like, it's like, in that moment, it's almost like I even sacrificed that love because I'm not, I didn't even give him that fucking, that fucking hug.

• 1:38:12Speaker 01

  I'm not going to see him until years later when it's not even him.

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  You see what I mean? So that's what I mean by in hindsight, like, like, okay, uh, for the war, what a sacrifice. And that's my family. Like, he's our brother. And all of us love him. And all of us probably could say something very similar. But he's also my blood.

• 1:38:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  So that's another equation there.

• 1:38:36Speaker 00

  Do you, do you regret not spending more time with your kid and having them go to Cleveland?

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  I, um, I don't regret now.

• 1:38:46Speaker 01

  You know, I have a beautiful wife and, and, and my, my, my new wife came in to help me raise my children. My ex-wife, we ended up.

• 1:38:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And my new wife came in and my son, you know, I know we getting, not me going deep here. But my son said this to me, and all praises is due to Allah, because, because I'm happy that I can hear my son say this. He said, uh, that he never, he didn't miss me because when I was there, I was so present. He was like, his friends, he's like, my friends asked me, I was like, um, no, like dad, nah, like, like dad is a type, I'm that type of dude, bro. Like, I mean, even I have fucking, like, but the, like, I'll put on a, I'll make a movie just for my son. Like, you know what I mean? Like, look at this, I made for you. Like, and I'll sit with, with, with his toys. And then I score, and then I score it.

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm that type of, like, I'm, I'm like, you know, I'm that type of, I am, I'm, when I'm there, I'm engaged. Yeah. So he said, so he told me, he didn't, you know, um, all, all my sons, you know what I mean? But daughters maybe a little more, more, takes a little more. And I think, and I, and I, and I gave more. Like, when it was, when I realized, when I was, uh, and I said this to any father, that when you realize that something is off course in your household.

• 1:40:02Speaker 00

  You gotta get in there.

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  Get in there, bro. Take the time. Be patient. You know, my daughter, I didn't know what to do, right? Um, I didn't know how to communicate with her. It was, I was working on that TV show Gang related. And we had this, this other guest actress who maybe had two episodes with us. And, you know, she, you know, she would hear me vent because, uh, the lead actor, Ramon, is, you know, we became, you know, we do a TV show, we become brothers, right? So he had me, I was like, yeah, my daughter. And she said, well, girls are different, Bobby. You need to just. Text her every day, even if she don't respond. Text, call every day. I said, and eventually, saying eventually she will respond.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  And about four or five months later, yeah, and then we built a relationship that's, that's, that's beautiful now.

• 1:40:50Mark Gagnon?

  Wow.

• 1:40:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, you need to push through that boundary because what she's feeling is that you don't want to be there. And it's very difficult to show love to somebody who is rejecting the love.

• 1:41:01Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:01Speaker 00

  But that's actually when they need it the most.

• 1:41:03Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:04Speaker 00

  Ah, yeah, that's tricky.

• 1:41:05Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, the kid stuff, yeah.

• 1:41:07Mark Gagnon?

  So fascinating. You mentioned this earlier. It's like when you lock in on something, that's like so focused. And then like you haven't been writing because you're focused on editing the movie and things like that. So you'll get so focused. Have you adjusted to find like balance to be able to do multiple things? Or is you still operate the same way?

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  I think I got balanced now. It's just like, look.

• 1:41:33Speaker 01

  In the middle of this interview, pour some fucking heaven sake. You know what I mean? Uh, I come, so I've not found the balance, bro, because it's the sort of things that I love that I do. You know what I mean? So I love piano. Ninety percent of the time, if I'm home, the first thing I do after a cup of coffee is sit by the piano.

• 1:41:57Mark Gagnon?

  Get out of here. You wake up, coffee, and just hit the, wow.

• 1:42:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, or the guitar. The guitar is right by my bed, bro. So I get up, I'm about to have the coffee, pick the guitar. And you know what? I'm not a singer, you know that, but I could sing my wife a song. I'm quite sure she might, she's enjoying it because it's me.

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

  But I know I'm not, I'm not hearing no Luke Devantos. No, it's over there. But, but at the end of the day, though, it's, it's, I love music. And, and also before I faced the world, you know what I mean? It's like I try to give myself some time. And then the second thing I've learned is, um,

• 1:42:39Speaker 01

  But first of all, the blessings of life, right? So even like we all would say, cause you took a year off or something like that, right?

• 1:42:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:46Speaker 01

  So you ran around, you did your shit, but then you home and you fucking, your home is heaven.

• 1:42:53Speaker 00

  That is the problem. Sometimes it gets really comfy.

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  Right, but that's the beauty of going out, right? Kings don't build castles for kings. Kings build castles for queens so that when they come home, they're in heaven.

• 1:43:11Speaker 01

  That's, I've been blessed with that kind of life, you know what I mean? On this project even more, my wife is a producer, so. Nice. I came here from, I left her, she's right in the hotel room waiting for me to come back.

• 1:43:23Speaker 00

  Wow. Was that tricky to have her input on the?

• 1:43:26Speaker 01

  It's great, great, great, great. Cause first of all, it's truth.

• 1:43:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:43:30Speaker 01

  It ain't gonna be no bullshit. Yeah. That's corny.

• 1:43:35Speaker 01

  Even I said something the other day, she, cause she actually sometimes comes to the interview. The other day, I guess I was, I don't know, I started talking about some sex or some shit. And she said after the shit, she was like, chill out.

• 1:43:48Speaker 01

  I'm talking about the sex. I wasn't relating it to something in the film. You seen the film, of course. And shit, right?

• 1:43:53Speaker 00

  It's a nice little scene. Nice little scene.

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  That's a little debacle me in there too.

• 1:43:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was, she was.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

• 1:44:01Speaker 00

  She was bouncing on it, man.

• 1:44:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:03Speaker 00

  She was bouncing on it.

• 1:44:07Speaker 00

  It is weird cause they're in high school in the movie, so you're like, yo, I know, I know these actors aren't.

• 1:44:13Speaker 01

  It's art, bro, it's art.

• 1:44:14Speaker 00

  You gotta stop this belief a little bit.

• 1:44:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so anyway, but it's in the movie.

• 1:44:19Speaker 00

  It's in the movie.

• 1:44:20Speaker 01

  But she was, but she's right. That's not what the movie's about.

• 1:44:22Speaker 00

  Yo, does he nut right when the cops come, come in?

• 1:44:25Speaker 01

  That's funny, eh?

• 1:44:26Speaker 00

  I thought it was hilarious.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  I thought that was hilarious.

• 1:44:29Speaker 00

  The second the cops. Come in and the dude just busts a little. The girl, the girl's bouncing really crazy. I'm gonna bed nut it. But he doesn't know. He's still rolling, go back. I said I'm gonna bed nut it. But he doesn't know until the two cops come in like, hey, put it. What type of internalized trauma is that?

• 1:44:49Mark Gagnon?

  You need a little more sometimes.

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  Oh, but you gotta get him over there.

• 1:44:53Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  So that guy, RJ Scyler plays that actor.

• 1:44:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's great.

• 1:44:57Speaker 01

  Man, he's good, man.

• 1:44:58Speaker 00

  He is good.

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  You seen him in the, uh, The Book of Clarence, you ever see that one?

• 1:45:02Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah, that was good.

• 1:45:03Speaker 00

  He's good.

• 1:45:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:04Speaker 00

  What's Book of Clarence?

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  That was, uh, that was the key, big, big role.

• 1:45:08Speaker 00

  Oh, Stanfield.

• 1:45:09Mark Gagnon?

  Jay-Z produced that, I think.

• 1:45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:45:11Speaker 00

  Yo, how did you get Michael Jackson's daughter in that?

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  Paris Jackson. I got lucky, bro.

• 1:45:17Speaker 00

  That was crazy.

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  Yo, she, um.

• 1:45:19Speaker 00

  Cause I didn't know she was in it.

• 1:45:20Speaker 01

  Yo, Mike, until you saw it.

• 1:45:22Speaker 00

  I'm watching, I'm like, yo, is this Mike's kid? Sanity is.

• 1:45:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, she, um, it was my casting agent, Kim Harding. She said that Paris, uh, is, is acting now and she's looking for good roles. You mind if I send her the script? I said, yeah, send it to her. And then she responded and then we got on a Zoom. And, um, yeah, I was like, you know, first of all, it'd be a pleasure. The thing about her that I think is special is that she don't need to do it.

• 1:45:49Speaker 00

  At all.

• 1:45:50Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:51Speaker 00

  At all.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  Right? And when you doing a movie, bro, you gotta get up six in the morning. Sit in a fucking makeup chair. Deal with a bunch of motherfuckers you don't know. And then go be somebody that you're not. Right? Most people do it for money.

• 1:46:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. For, or a lust for fame.

• 1:46:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. She don't need none of that. Yeah.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  So, so only way she could do it if she's a what? An artist. And she is, bro.

• 1:46:18Speaker 00

  Really, she will. She loves it.

• 1:46:19Speaker 01

  She's an artist, bro. She, first of all, she has, um, every actor got something, like Shami Moore, who's the lead character. He's a sponge.

• 1:46:27Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  He's a sponge. He'll sit here.

• 1:46:29Speaker 00

  Soak it up.

• 1:46:30Speaker 01

  Soak you up, go give you back, you know what I mean? She has what I call the muscle memory of an actress. I seen that in Uma Thurman and I seen it in Lucy Liu.

• 1:46:42Speaker 01

  Which is, the way this table is, it's going, if, if, if the scene was this.

• 1:46:56Speaker 00

  She gonna do it again. Exactly.

• 1:46:58Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:46:59Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:47:00Speaker 01

  And I was like, that's okay. I said, she's actually meant to be an actress. It's up to her. If she wants to be, she can easily be.

• 1:47:08Speaker 02

  Did you ever, did you meet Mike?

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  I never met Michael Jackson.

• 1:47:11Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  No. The only one I know when I met him in our crew was Ghost and Ray, because they called me that day.

• 1:47:17Speaker 00

  What the, what was, how did that happen?

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  They was, I think they met him, they met him twice. They met him at the Hit Factory in New York, and then they met him at the Hit Factory in Miami.

• 1:47:27Speaker 00

  What did they say when they?

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  They said that, like, they said that he was like a prince. Like, like a, like a, not prince, the artist.

• 1:47:34Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  There was a guy, no, no, he was like a prince.

• 1:47:39Speaker 00

  His steam.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, like, like, like, I couldn't imagine, like, he probably like, like, remember I talk about the guy who had that little small vibration?

• 1:47:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47:48Speaker 01

  He probably had a vibration that was like.

• 1:47:50Speaker 00

  Bro. You see it, and you as like a person who's famous, you, you know it, and you probably feel it, right? Like, you know when you're in a room and people recognize you, you could feel the attention going to you.

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:48:00Speaker 00

  And then there's people that like, like, I was, I remember once I was at the Comedy Cellar, it's a comedy club in New York, and greatest comedy club in the world.

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  I know that.

• 1:48:09Speaker 00

  I know, you know.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  Of course, of course.

• 1:48:10Speaker 00

  So, uh, and Madonna was there for some reason. And like, I, I don't think we forget how famous Madonna was, like, you know, is, or is, like, of course. But it was, it was a fascinating thing, because it's not like there aren't famous people that go there regularly. But she was just at a table, and the feeling was, nobody in that room could concentrate on whatever they were pretending to talk about. Like, you and I are talking.

• 1:48:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:48:39Speaker 00

  But both of us are kind of veering off.

• 1:48:41Speaker 01

  You're feeling this energy.

• 1:48:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. And like, I always wonder what that does to a person.

• 1:48:47Speaker 01

  That's, that's vibrating the energy.

• 1:48:49Speaker 00

  And it's getting that energy vibrating back, like, constantly, gravity on you, no matter where you go.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  You know, let me, let me give you a small theory on it, and I don't got those type of people's energy, right? I got my own, but I, so, it took me years for my wife to watch me perform. If she looks, I'm stumbling, bro.

• 1:49:12Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 1:49:13Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:49:14Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying?

• 1:49:15Speaker 00

  Why, why, does she know a different version of you?

• 1:49:17Speaker 01

  Whatever, like, I don't, maybe. You know what I mean? It's maybe. It's like, it's like, yeah, it's like, don't look at me. You know what I mean? Because it's this, you know what I mean? So it could be also, I'm so enamored by her. You see what I mean? So it could be, you know, the same way, but, but I'm saying, I'm trying to say that, that maybe that's some energy in that to where it's a celebrity or somebody, they have a chi that, that rattles you. You know what? I did an interview, uh, at the, on KTLA, uh, last week. And I watch KTLA every fucking morning. I wasn't really on point the first minute.

• 1:49:59Speaker 00

  You were nervous a little bit going into?

• 1:50:01Speaker 01

  Yo, bro, the first minute, I didn't even think I was nervous, though. I was backstage talking to motherfuckers, all shit, yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, yeah, you gonna do? Yeah, cool. Oh, yeah, I'm trying, okay, give me, put the mic on, yeah, you're high, yeah, put the mic right here, I got it inside pocket, yeah. Boom. I sit down and shit, they say, oh, shit, these motherfuckers.

• 1:50:24Speaker 01

  I was like.

• 1:50:25Speaker 02

  Just froze up a little bit.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  And they, they, they, they, they ain't no time for nothing, but like, so, really?

• 1:50:32Speaker 01

  I said, uh, yeah, you know, like, shit, yeah, you know, I ain't. But you know what I mean? I'm like, you know what I mean? I'm trying to get it together, and it took about a beat. And then I got like, my shit is stoked. But it was like, it started soggy dick, bro.

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  It had a blow on it.

• 1:50:56Speaker 02

  Have you met people like that, where you just get in their presence and you're like, oh, their chi is crazy? Like, they're vibrating at a different level?

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  Um, yeah.

• 1:51:03Speaker 02

  Who are some people that come to mind?

• 1:51:04Speaker 01

  I mean, I mean, over the time, I mean, so many different people you meet like that, like you feel them.

• 1:51:12Speaker 01

  You know, Mike Tyson was like that to me, cause I, cause I was such a fan. You know what I mean? Oh, he's my brother now, but, um, like.

• 1:51:24Speaker 01

  For me, it's different, right? If I can't like say the name, name, name, name, name. But I think, I think Denzel Washington

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  had a, had a, had an energy that made me like, kinda like, a little, I say a shrink in energy, right? Because, that's, that's the best way to use, I think that's a good terminology. Hmm. A shrink in energy, motherfuckers that can shrink you. Hmm. You know what I mean? And I think he had it, on American Gangster, he's the, he's the greatest actor in the world at the time. He's Denzel fucking Washington. Still. Yeah. Still. And I just, you know, like, they was like, oh, you wanna meet Denzel? Hmm. And I was like, yeah, exactly, right? And it, it was like, okay, we're gonna bring you to his trailer. Now,

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  you don't go to a motherfuckers, only groupies gonna go to your trailer. Hmm. Right, I mean. I'm a groupie. Bro. Yeah, hold on, you know what? That's what I'm trying to tell you, I went to his trailer. But, but normally, I'm not going to nobody's motherfucking trailer. Yeah, yeah. So I go to his trailer, and they knock, boom, boom, boom. And the door don't open. Now, they came and got me. Oh, no. So they, boom, boom, they knock again. The door never opened, bro. It never opened. Okay? And eventually, my car came and took me the fuck home. Okay. So, so I don't meet him and shit, right?

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  Um, so, and I, I was a little puzzled by it, but, and I, I was, my, my fucking hand was sweating anyway, so maybe it's a good thing I didn't. But then, uh, there's a scene in the movie where they say, um, where, where, where Russell Crowe's character is gonna examine him and go through all the history and they're gonna break it all down. And the scene was written that Russell Crowe and Denzel are gonna have that moment. But Russell, he already unbilled his camaraderie with all the actors and his, his police force. He was like, no, mate. Me and my guys is gonna do that. You know, that's like, like, I wouldn't do that by myself. My whole crew who helped bring this down would be here, that's, that's how it would work. And really, Scott was like, okay.

• 1:53:45Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And so now, I'm in a scene with Denzel. Yeah. Wow. Right? And bro.

• 1:53:55Speaker 01

  He didn't speak to me.

• 1:53:59Speaker 01

  Like, he almost didn't look at me. You know? And I remember, like, on the first two takes, going back out. And, uh, Ridley, Ridley Scott was like, oh. Like, you know, like, what's up with this guy? And I got, and I, and I, and I, I was living in my own head, so I kinda took it a little personal. But it wasn't not me, he didn't speak, he didn't speak to none of us. He spoke to Russ. Okay, and that, and that, even that was. And so it kept, so anyway, this take five, and Ridley's trying to tell him, you know, give him some director advice, whatever the fuck he was saying, right? And now we at take four or five. And, uh. It's the same thing, bro. You know what I mean? I threw some lines in Staten Island, you know, I tried, you know, I tried.

• 1:54:44Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And when you watch the film, it's in this, the scene is in there. And, but at, on the very last moment of the last, okay, we got it. Right, some, somebody says something. He said what? I fucking forced, he said what? Why would I be fucking smiling with a fucking bunch of cops? I'm Frank Lucas. Hmm, oh. Why would I be friendly to a bunch of fucking cops? I'm Frank Lucas. He stayed in the character. Oh, wow. Right? Now, I still didn't get it.

• 1:55:15Speaker 01

  I mean, how could I? I'm new. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is my, what, second, third film?

• 1:55:19Speaker 00

  Imagine your second, third film, and you're sitting across, Denzel fucking watching.

• 1:55:22Speaker 01

  It's a blessing. But I'm new. So now, and I, and I, and I go home, and I, and I tell my wife. I'm like, I don't think Denzel like me. She said, what you mean? I said, I don't know, baby, like, like, like, like, like, I, I, I knocked on his door. You know what I mean?

• 1:55:36Speaker 00

  Going through every moment.

• 1:55:37Speaker 01

  Like, yeah. And she's like, oh, no, I. She, and she, cause she loves Denzel.

• 1:55:42Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 1:55:43Speaker 01

  And said, and so I, I wanted to be able to come home and say, yeah, Denzel, my man.

• 1:55:49Speaker 01

  But what finally happens, bro? Which, which, which shows how amazing he is. Now it's the premiere.

• 1:55:57Speaker 01

  And we walk in the red carpet and somebody comes from behind and grabs me and gives me a big hug, like from the back and I turn around, fucking Denzel Washington.

• 1:56:05Mark Gagnon?

  Wow.

• 1:56:07Speaker 01

  You're great in the film and shit.

• 1:56:11Speaker 01

  I'm like, oh shit. He's like, take a picture. And took a picture with me and my wife and all of us. And I seen him after that and we cool.

• 1:56:21Mark Gagnon?

  Wow.

• 1:56:22Speaker 01

  But I was like, oh shit. And I was, you know, everything was like, ah.

• 1:56:25Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  He knows me, he likes me, I'm cool.

• 1:56:28Mark Gagnon?

  Cause you didn't meet Denzel, you met Frank Lucas.

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that's, that's, that's the kind of professional that he is and that's the kind of professional that, that really,

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

  if you're serious about that craft, right? I think that's a smart approach. I don't know if I could do that because I come from different disciplines. So I bring a different discipline with it. You know what I mean? But he's one of the best to ever do it. So it makes totally, total sense and shit.

• 1:56:58Mark Gagnon?

  He probably tells that story, he's like, I was waking up, the cops is banging on my door.

• 1:57:02Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 1:57:05Speaker 01

  I don't know what the fuck, I don't know what the fuck that was and shit.

• 1:57:08Speaker 00

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• 2:00:42Speaker 02

  Let's get back to the show.

• 2:00:43Speaker 00

  You were telling us a story before of going to this rapper from Detroit, his first album release party.

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  Oh, I went to Eminem's first album release party. I met him there. I was the only east coast motherfucker in there, bro. It was in LA.

• 2:00:59Speaker 00

  How did you know about him?

• 2:01:01Speaker 01

  Who, Eminem?

• 2:01:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, because before the album is released, I think the single's doing well.

• 2:01:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, the single's doing well, yeah.

• 2:01:07Speaker 00

  But he wasn't the sensation immediately.

• 2:01:10Speaker 01

  Well, he, I mean, I think lyrics has recognized him immediately.

• 2:01:13Speaker 00

  So, okay, so the community, the people who are rap, rap, rap.

• 2:01:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, lyrics has recognized him immediately. Now, now, I didn't meet him back, like, so I had other guys that worked underneath me. When my up and coming crew was staying at the Oakwood Apartments, so there's a place in California called the Oakwood Apartments. In those days, all corporate motherfu, all artists would get an apartment, it's a corporate housing.

• 2:01:40Speaker 00

  Someone else has been told, told me about this.

• 2:01:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:42Speaker 00

  And it was also, I think, like, if you were doing pilot season?

• 2:01:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:45Speaker 00

  Like, your mom and you would come, if you're like a child actor and you get an apartment there, okay.

• 2:01:49Speaker 01

  You get an apartment at the Oakwood Apartments. A lot of actors or up and coming artists.

• 2:01:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:01:54Speaker 01

  Eminem was there, at the Oakwood, and he met some of, some of my, some of the younger killer bees, like a guy named Hall of Cards and all these dudes.

• 2:02:05Speaker 00

  Interesting name.

• 2:02:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's his, that's his fucking name, bro.

• 2:02:11Speaker 00

  But some guys are killer, you know what I mean? What's bigger than a killer?

• 2:02:14Speaker 01

  How'd it go, boy? How'd it go in the entertainment? One single.

• 2:02:20Speaker 01

  Actually, rest in peace, he passed away. You know, you know who could quote Holocaust lyric from beginning to end?

• 2:02:25Speaker 00

  The Jews?

• 2:02:27Speaker 01

  Seth Rogen, bro.

• 2:02:28Speaker 00

  Get out of here.

• 2:02:29Speaker 01

  Seth Rogen knew that shit. When I met Seth Rogen, he knew that whole fucking verse. The verse is amazing. It's not a...

• 2:02:35Speaker 00

  Is it in German?

• 2:02:39Speaker 01

  Like, I think, like, like, he, he, like, as, and that, I never actually had to say his name like that. I guess.

• 2:02:47Speaker 02

  You just call him Koss. You just call him Koss.

• 2:02:50Speaker 00

  Or Holla.

• 2:02:53Speaker 01

  He was good. That shit, he, he, he had, he had some shit, it was the West Coast Killer Bees and shit, but, uh, anyway, but anyway, they, they met Eminem back in those days and shit, and they told me about him and shit, like, you know what I mean? Cause they was, they were getting to ciphers.

• 2:03:07Speaker 00

  Okay, so they knew there was like some news percolating.

• 2:03:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, but when it, but when I, uh, went to the album release, I just went, like, and those, I, I think in that phase of my life, trying to move, I, I moved to Cali, or, you know, I'm, I'm type of motherfucker that will show up. You know what I mean? If, if, if, if somebody like, oh, they got a hip hop so and so tonight, so and so, you wanna, you wanna pop in? You know, I'm, yeah, why not? It's a party?

• 2:03:34Speaker 01

  Yo, and I be the only motherfucker, yo, bro, I be the only motherfucker from the East Coast in the whole fucking party. You know what I mean? And, and it felt...

• 2:03:43Speaker 00

  But there was love for Wu-Tang.

• 2:03:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was love. No, I felt super comfortable when, and there, there's love, I mean, come on, Dr. Dre, that's like the, the godfather of it all. You know what I mean? And, and, and even when I first met him, it was just like, it was like a pleasure, like a joy.

• 2:03:58Speaker 00

  I imagine when he meets you, given how much he cares about, especially like rapping lyrics, he's meeting someone he's admired for a very long time. Is there like...

• 2:04:11Speaker 01

  It's mutual.

• 2:04:12Speaker 00

  Of course, of course.

• 2:04:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I gotta say, you know, no, it's mutual.

• 2:04:15Speaker 00

  He loves the game, you could really feel like he loves it.

• 2:04:17Speaker 01

  He's giving me, he's giving me some great compliments and it's mutual. It's like, he's, he, he's one of, he's one, if anything, if you wanted to sound like a fucking record, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta emulate him. You know what I mean? I wasn't trying to sound like a record, honestly, for, for, until I was trying. Like, for many years, I didn't try to, I was trying to sound like the demo. You know what I mean, I wanted my shit to sound like, yo, son, this shit niggas made this shit.

• 2:04:45Speaker 00

  Like grimy.

• 2:04:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I want my shit to be like, yo, bro, fuck that.

• 2:04:50Speaker 00

  Low-fi.

• 2:04:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know how it is when you first, I mean, especially like, I'm a generation older than you guys, but hip-hop started on fucking tapes, bro, with hisses.

• 2:05:05Speaker 00

  My dad used to work at NBC with like producing news on NBC. He was first in Baltimore and then he came up and, and he did a news story and it was the first ever news story on, on rap music. And he went up and there was a guy named, it was up in the Bronx, there was a club, I forget the name.

• 2:05:23Speaker 01

  The Fever?

• 2:05:24Speaker 00

  I don't know, I gotta ask him, but uh, it was DJ Hollywood.

• 2:05:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, DJ Hollywood, classic, yeah.

• 2:05:29Speaker 00

  And he was like, dude, he was like, this guy was like, he was just kinda freestyling, he was going like off the, and imagine like a white dude that like grew up in New York.

• 2:05:37Speaker 01

  Never heard this shit before.

• 2:05:38Speaker 00

  He has, he's there and everybody's telling him about this like, this is very, my dad's old, he's eighty years old, you know what I mean? And he goes, and he actually met with like Russell in his like midtown one office with no desk. It was just a telephone and two chairs, right? And uh, but he said he was, Curtis Blow was there and stuff, but he said there was something about that, like that DJ Hollywood guy. And I was always curious, so like people came up or at least were like aware at the time.

• 2:06:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, DJ Hollywood had tapes floating around, like um, I'm more of the era of Cold Crush Brothers, which is, which is, you know Cold Crush Brothers?

• 2:06:13Speaker 00

  No.

• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  Okay, so Cold Crush, I mean, people were arguing that Grandmaster cast of the Cold Crush Brothers is, might be the third rapper in history.

• 2:06:28Speaker 00

  Really?

• 2:06:29Speaker 01

  Like, you know what I'm saying? He might be the third, they saying there's a guy named Cold La Rock.

• 2:06:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:06:35Speaker 01

  Right, he might be the first rapper in history.

• 2:06:41Speaker 01

  Melli Mel. Grandmaster cast, these are amongst the considerable, these are considered some of the first. And if not, definitely in the Bronx, you know what I mean, where it comes from, so.

• 2:06:54Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:06:55Speaker 01

  So, so, uh, the Cold Crush Brothers, that was, that's, so I'm from the Cold Crush Brothers, the Fantastic Five,

• 2:07:05Speaker 01

  um, Fearless Four, uh, Crash Crew.

• 2:07:11Speaker 00

  So this is percolating at a time.

• 2:07:13Speaker 01

  This is, that's tapes, bro.

• 2:07:14Speaker 00

  And, and this is like, huh, I'm trying to figure out like what it connects to, like I remember when I was a kid, do you remember like the Jackass, that show Jackass on TV?

• 2:07:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:23Speaker 00

  Before Jackass, there was this thing that Bam Margera and his brother and their friends did, there was a skate video called CKY and CKY2K, and it would mix skateboarding with pranks.

• 2:07:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:07:33Speaker 00

  This is the first experience I had with something that was like viral through like handing it to people.

• 2:07:39Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:07:39Speaker 00

  In the same way that tapes, I think, were, like, I remember getting like Big L's tape.

• 2:07:44Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 2:07:45Speaker 00

  And it was almost people would gatekeep Big L a little bit, it was like.

• 2:07:49Speaker 01

  It's a secret, right?

• 2:07:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I don't know why they felt like they wanted to be a secret, but the only way you could hear about shit, it wasn't marketing, it wasn't fucking promo.

• 2:07:57Speaker 01

  Somebody had to hand it to you.

• 2:07:58Speaker 00

  Someone handed it to you and maybe you could like burn a copy of it.

• 2:08:01Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, you got your fucking Kanye in the box and you fucking.

• 2:08:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, press record, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:08:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's, that's, so that vibe and that feeling was always important to me, the, the, the, the, the vintage sound of hip hop.

• 2:08:15Speaker 00

  So you leaned into it.

• 2:08:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, when Juz did his first album, uh, Words from a Genius, um, it was in the stu-, it's like, he had the demo first. I had the demo on cassette, then when he put the album done, it, it, it, yeah.

• 2:08:30Speaker 00

  So what, you made it more like the demo?

• 2:08:32Speaker 01

  No, what he, no, what I'm saying is that I have the demo of his album, which I love, I love, love, love.

• 2:08:38Speaker 00

  The album was too refined.

• 2:08:39Speaker 01

  Then I get the album, like, yo, it sound like, what is like, what happened? Like, something that is like, it don't sound like you.

• 2:08:45Speaker 00

  The grittiness, the soul.

• 2:08:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, whatever they did in that fucking mixing board. So, so now my goal was to make sure that that doesn't lose. So when you put on Thirty Six Chamber, right, this is go to the tape, you turn it over, and cream, yo, you, you hear the tape, me, eh, eh, yo, son, class, eh, eh, eh, eh, yo, son, eh, like, all that shit happening, bro.

• 2:09:07Speaker 00

  The chaos.

• 2:09:08Speaker 01

  It's real.

• 2:09:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:09:09Speaker 01

  It's real, and then when the beat finally drops. Because you don't think it's gonna drop, you know what I mean? And I'm actually doing it live. I'm doing that live. I mean, because I'll be like, like on Seventh Chamber,

• 2:09:24Speaker 01

  I press every sneer manually.

• 2:09:29Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:09:29Speaker 00

  So you're keeping the timing yourself?

• 2:09:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, every fucking sneer. And you can hear it flap, blah, blah, whatever. I got it now.

• 2:09:40Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? I'm living it.

• 2:09:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:09:42Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 2:09:42Speaker 02

  It's not perfect, but it's real.

• 2:09:44Speaker 01

  It's real.

• 2:09:44Speaker 00

  Exactly. Not perfect is what people... The guy that does the audio, you met him earlier at Time Cosette. He's the best, in my opinion, doing audio for stand-up comedy. But a thing that we always talk about, like when we're filming specials, is like, you need to hear the audience. Sometimes, sometimes people who do audio for stand-up, they're, they just want the words to sound perfect, and then the audience. And I go, when you're at a comedy show, sometimes you don't even hear what the motherfucker's saying. These people laugh.

• 2:10:12Speaker 02

  Someone's ordering a drink behind you, there's a glass somewhere.

• 2:10:15Speaker 00

  Just like make it...

• 2:10:16Speaker 01

  That's smart, y'all.

• 2:10:17Speaker 00

  Like, give people that experience where they feel like they're there.

• 2:10:20Speaker 01

  That's smart, because your specials actually do sound good.

• 2:10:23Speaker 00

  That...

• 2:10:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:24Speaker 01

  No, no, seriously.

• 2:10:25Speaker 00

  Shout out to Tom.

• 2:10:25Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Because I've seen specials where it's like, it's still like it's hollow. Like, somebody put a filter over that shit.

• 2:10:31Speaker 00

  And they do.

• 2:10:31Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Because they want to make it perfect for the standards of what, you know, the stereo should be.

• 2:10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Netflix wanted like this.

• 2:10:38Speaker 00

  It's not a sitcom with a laugh track. It's human beings who laugh at weird times. Sometimes they laugh late.

• 2:10:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:10:45Speaker 00

  Sometimes they're kind of like repeating a word from it.

• 2:10:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:10:49Speaker 00

  Make it ugly.

• 2:10:50Speaker 01

  It's like Richard Pryor, right?

• 2:10:51Speaker 00

  Remember when they're walking in, when he was live in some shit?

• 2:10:54Speaker 02

  A guy walks up to him, takes a picture. It's like, it's so real.

• 2:10:57Speaker 00

  It's the realest moment.

• 2:10:58Speaker 01

  And he lives off it. He lives into it.

• 2:11:01Speaker 00

  I think that's one of the special sauce with Woo, is that you felt like it was, not only the characters, right? Characters, I'm using that.

• 2:11:09Speaker 01

  Respect, respect.

• 2:11:09Speaker 00

  But like, not only the people that populated it, but also like the sound. Everything about it felt so authentic, that it made things that weren't that feel mainstream or, uh, I don't want to say processed, but like, in reflection of it, like...

• 2:11:25Speaker 01

  Well, I know what you mean. It's like, it's almost like, you're like, the hoodie skateboarder is better than the fucking Olympic ice skater.

• 2:11:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:11:36Speaker 01

  Fuck all that shit.

• 2:11:38Speaker 00

  I don't need it.

• 2:11:38Speaker 01

  Even though it's all great.

• 2:11:39Speaker 00

  It's beautiful art.

• 2:11:40Speaker 01

  It's all great talent. Right. But it's like.

• 2:11:42Speaker 00

  I don't need the tassels, bro.

• 2:11:43Speaker 01

  I see myself. I don't need the tassels.

• 2:11:46Speaker 00

  That's it. I want it sneakers scuffed.

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 2:11:49Speaker 00

  I want it jeans ripped.

• 2:11:50Speaker 01

  Right. Makes sense, yo. Yeah. But, but, but, but I will say, there was intention to that, to the sound, you know? It was intention and it, and it stayed like that for a while. Because when I did the Method Man album, I felt like, uh, that we went to the studio on that album. I didn't, I never liked, I ain't gonna say I never liked it. I love what we did. But I just felt like it was, I let too many fingers touch it. So when I went to Cuban Links, I ain't let nobody touch it.

• 2:12:15Speaker 00

  Nobody touched it.

• 2:12:16Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? I didn't even go to the studio. I did, I put the board in my house, put the two-track reel in my fucking house. And that's, and if you even listen to that album, even though it's gonna sound, whatever way it's gonna sound, you may hear stuff that has more sonic weight to it. But sonic ideas and, and the way that the MCs sound, I had every one of their compressors set. So when Ghost came, you listen, like in the early albums, Ghost sound like Ghost again and again and again and again. Hmm. Eventually, he stopped sounding, they sound like Ghost, but he started, it started sounding a little different than the place I had him in. You know what I mean?

• 2:12:56Speaker 00

  Oh, because they stopped putting those compressors in the same place?

• 2:12:59Speaker 01

  Stop using, stop using what we use.

• 2:13:02Speaker 00

  This is, yeah.

• 2:13:03Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like the setting, like we came there today, I had a setting. Like you may, maybe these lights are preset for you.

• 2:13:08Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 2:13:09Speaker 01

  Every time you sit here, bro, it looks like your show. Mm-hmm. If you guys gotta shit, break this shit down and move, it, it.

• 2:13:15Speaker 00

  It's gonna be different, but.

• 2:13:17Speaker 01

  It's closed.

• 2:13:18Speaker 00

  So you had the Ghost setting?

• 2:13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had the Ghost, I had everybody's setting, bro. I wanna ask you a question.

• 2:13:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:13:23Speaker 01

  Cause I just, we talking about Mr. P. Who, name, you know, name five of your.

• 2:13:27Speaker 00

  Patrice O'Neal. Patrice O'Neal, Patrice O'Neal.

• 2:13:30Speaker 01

  That's your favorite?

• 2:13:32Speaker 00

  Patrice O'Neal.

• 2:13:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:13:33Speaker 00

  That's my top five.

• 2:13:34Speaker 01

  He's funny. To her. Yeah, wow. That's good. Die alone, die alone, die.

• 2:13:39Speaker 00

  Now, listen, this is, I've seen everybody live. And I've seen them on their recorded stuff. So it's, I'm not just judging off of like what you see on video. There's some people where you see they're like, they're special. And in my opinion, it's not like the best representation of them, not even because of the jokes. Sometimes like their energy doesn't permeate the television.

• 2:14:00Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 2:14:01Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? And there are some people who permeate the television, but like in person is not as impressive.

• 2:14:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:14:06Speaker 00

  I don't know what that is, I don't know what that force is, but some people have that, that gift or that thing.

• 2:14:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:14:11Speaker 00

  To me, it was just, he was the most, he was just the most fully formed. Like he could give you great jokes. He could bring you into the joke. He could make you think it was happening in real time. And he could do a joke about the toughest thing and get you to laugh at it.

• 2:14:30Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go back and study him. I've seen some of his work, but not a lot of it. And he is funny, but I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go take another observation.

• 2:14:37Speaker 00

  Elephant in the Room is the one that's probably available now on Netflix. Look, he passed, like RIP, like.

• 2:14:43Speaker 02

  He didn't put out a ton.

• 2:14:44Speaker 01

  I didn't know that he passed.

• 2:14:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's almost like a Biggie, no, no, Biggie was bigger, he was more renowned, but like.

• 2:14:51Speaker 01

  Well, he's, he's one of those super, like a Big L, maybe.

• 2:14:54Speaker 00

  That's maybe a better. Like everybody knew about him. But to me, it's like not even.

• 2:15:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:15:01Speaker 00

  I haven't seen anybody touch it.

• 2:15:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. Who's, who's your favorite comedian?

• 2:15:05Speaker 01

  For me, like Richard Pryor just always seems to like had, had, had always. Like, he was, he, I, I still got him as number one. Because he was able to, my stomach growling, hear that?

• 2:15:19Speaker 00

  That was a long, I thought it was the subway.

• 2:15:25Speaker 00

  I never heard someone say my stomach's growling while it's still growling.

• 2:15:29Speaker 02

  You've got a subway for in his soul.

• 2:15:32Speaker 01

  I drunk before I ate.

• 2:15:35Speaker 01

  My stomach's like, yo, bro, that's what you giving me?

• 2:15:38Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right.

• 2:15:38Speaker 01

  That's this one, twice in there. It's a coy. But.

• 2:15:43Speaker 00

  Richard is fantastic.

• 2:15:44Speaker 01

  The reason why I say him for me is I just never seen nobody before or after animate anything into a situation.

• 2:15:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:15:56Speaker 01

  Like, he's like, yo, the dog, he had the dog always barking at me and shit, right? And shit, he said, then he had the monkeys, and then the monkeys die and shit, and the monkeys died. I was fucking sad, my monkeys died and shit. You know, I was sitting there, and the fucking dog that used to chase me, he jumps over the fence and shit. You go, hey, man, sorry about your monkeys.

• 2:16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's sad, I was gonna eat them and shit. You know what I mean? It's like, he's like, you know, don't let that shit get to you, man, you know, that shit could fuck you up, you know? Uh, yeah, be strong, man, alright? He said, then the dog licked my hand and he ran and jumped back over the fence, but before he landed, he looked back and said, now you're gonna be chasing your ass again tomorrow. I was like, so is that's a different?

• 2:16:47Speaker 00

  No, Richard's fantastic.

• 2:16:47Speaker 02

  And the jokes still hold up. You listen to like old prior, like they still work. Like, a comic could do them today, like maybe changing like a little, like some language stuff, but like it's, the essence is still there. A lot of old comics, it kind of ages.

• 2:16:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. Comedy doesn't, comedy doesn't age well a lot of times.

• 2:17:02Speaker 01

  Hey, they're watching, hold on.

• 2:17:05Speaker 00

  Again?

• 2:17:06Speaker 01

  Train's coming.

• 2:17:08Mark Gagnon?

  Who's an artist you would love to work with that you haven't been able to?

• 2:17:13Speaker 01

  Um, I don't know, right? I'm open to artists. I just, I just, uh, musically, you know, I never, like, this is corny, but I said it a hundred times, I'll say it again. I never really worked with Lion Hill, bro.

• 2:17:26Speaker 00

  She's out there again.

• 2:17:27Speaker 01

  I know, but I never, like, if that was something that I think should have happened, and definitely in our primes, it just never happened, y'all.

• 2:17:36Speaker 02

  That would be fire.

• 2:17:36Speaker 01

  Can you?

• 2:17:37Mark Gagnon?

  Maybe you can get her to put out another album. I know, we've been waiting a long time for that.

• 2:17:43Speaker 00

  Well, she already got the Apple number one.

• 2:17:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:17:47Speaker 00

  Album of the fucking history.

• 2:17:49Speaker 02

  I think they got it right, too.

• 2:17:50Speaker 00

  She killed it. Okay, so, just. Real quick, Big L to you. What was happening in your life around that time? This is a very New York.

• 2:18:01Speaker 01

  No, Big L's my man, bro.

• 2:18:02Speaker 00

  Wait, you knew him?

• 2:18:03Speaker 01

  Bro, I don't talk a lot about Big L and shit, cuz that's my man and shit. And me and Big L was rhyming back before Wu-Tang.

• 2:18:13Speaker 00

  Get the fuck out of here.

• 2:18:14Speaker 01

  No way. So.

• 2:18:15Speaker 00

  So people outside of New York, I don't know if they really know Big L that much.

• 2:18:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's, he's growing though.

• 2:18:21Speaker 00

  It's weird, like I'll see, even in like Europe sometime, I'll be like, they'll be aware of him.

• 2:18:26Speaker 01

  He's, he's like one of those, like, it's certain jazz musicians too, right? That you, you realize that they were another pillar of it, right? Another energy of it that you go, you don't realize until you realize it.

• 2:18:39Speaker 00

  I think he was, I think he was ahead of his time, bro.

• 2:18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was special, bro, and, and, and, and that was my man, that was my man, man. I know Method Man said one time that, uh, I don't wanna repeat with it, you know? Times that got tougher, Big L, so he, he, he became a street pharmacist.

• 2:18:55Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm. I thought his brother was the street guy and he was.

• 2:18:59Speaker 01

  Well, either way, I remember I had to dial him.

• 2:19:04Speaker 01

  But that was my man, though.

• 2:19:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:19:06Speaker 01

  I, I, I mean, I was, I had a, I had a drug moment, I don't talk too much about my drug moments and shit, so.

• 2:19:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:19:11Speaker 01

  But I had a drug moment a little bit, I was fucked up and.

• 2:19:13Speaker 00

  Really?

• 2:19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was lost in the sauce, bro.

• 2:19:15Speaker 00

  Using or, or distributing?

• 2:19:17Speaker 01

  No, using, bro.

• 2:19:19Speaker 00

  Really?

• 2:19:19Speaker 01

  Like, like, like, yeah, I said, I kept it to, you know, especially after my mom's pass, yo. My mom's pass, it's just like, I don't know, I lost myself for some years and shit. It wasn't.

• 2:19:28Speaker 00

  Reasonable?

• 2:19:29Speaker 01

  It, it was kept, you know, I kept it contained and shit, you know what I mean? I mean, I mean, I contain, it wasn't publicly exposed, you know what I mean?

• 2:19:39Speaker 00

  What was the?

• 2:19:40Speaker 01

  I didn't, I didn't get into that, bro.

• 2:19:41Speaker 00

  You don't even wanna get into it?

• 2:19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I call it, you know what, I made my own formula.

• 2:19:45Speaker 00

  Get the fuck out of here.

• 2:19:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, the shit I was doing, bro.

• 2:19:48Speaker 00

  You are a producer.

• 2:19:49Speaker 01

  Bro, the shit, yo.

• 2:19:51Speaker 00

  All of Sam, bro.

• 2:19:53Speaker 01

  Yo, trust me, you package the shit I made.

• 2:19:57Speaker 00

  Trillion, trillion, man.

• 2:20:00Speaker 01

  I'm serious, bro.

• 2:20:01Speaker 00

  Really?

• 2:20:01Speaker 01

  You package what I came up with?

• 2:20:04Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:20:05Mark Gagnon?

  How long? Like, how long did you go through that period?

• 2:20:08Speaker 01

  I feel like it lasted at least,

• 2:20:12Speaker 01

  at least, uh, probably seven years.

• 2:20:15Mark Gagnon?

  No fucking way.

• 2:20:16Speaker 01

  Like Bobby Digital is a product of that.

• 2:20:18Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 2:20:19Speaker 00

  How did you, how did you kick it? How did you?

• 2:20:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll cut you out.

• 2:20:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, like.

• 2:20:25Speaker 01

  We'll talk about that another time.

• 2:20:26Speaker 00

  Fair enough.

• 2:20:27Mark Gagnon?

  Okay.

• 2:20:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:28Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:20:28Speaker 01

  But it's gone. I don't even smoke weed.

• 2:20:29Speaker 00

  I know.

• 2:20:30Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:20:31Mark Gagnon?

  But that's interesting.

• 2:20:32Speaker 01

  Saki's good.

• 2:20:32Speaker 00

  Barely indulging Saki. Wow.

• 2:20:34Mark Gagnon?

  Because I love when you started doing the Bobby Digital stuff. I was like, oh, wow. I'm just seeing a new side of you and I didn't know that I was.

• 2:20:39Speaker 01

  But I saw the future.

• 2:20:41Speaker 00

  Wait a minute, what do you mean?

• 2:20:43Speaker 02

  Bobby Digital.

• 2:20:44Speaker 00

  You saw the future as inspired by this consumption? Or because you've always had a kind of foresight in what was going on?

• 2:20:50Speaker 01

  That accelerated my foresight.

• 2:20:56Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 2:20:58Speaker 00

  And then was part of that future bad if you didn't kick it? And that's why you're like, I gotta get off this shit?

• 2:21:05Speaker 01

  Guaranteed.

• 2:21:06Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:21:08Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:21:09Speaker 00

  Some, like, spiritual experience type of thing?

• 2:21:11Speaker 01

  These guys trying to dig me in.

• 2:21:13Speaker 00

  Sorry, bro. Don't do this.

• 2:21:15Speaker 01

  Let's come back, let's come back to another time.

• 2:21:18Speaker 00

  Wow. Sorry, sorry. You were saying about L. You guys were close. And then you had to call and be like, listen, dude, like.

• 2:21:26Speaker 01

  No, I was calling him for, he had one third of my formula.

• 2:21:31Speaker 02

  I need a sample.

• 2:21:33Speaker 01

  Well, at least 20, 20, what's his? He had 25% of the formula. I had to get it from him.

• 2:21:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:39Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:21:40Mark Gagnon?

  But that was a real thing that rappers used to do, like, would go to other rapper, or other rappers' hoods and like battle. Like, that was a real thing. Because you hear stories of Big L and Jay-Z having these rap battles. And that's how you met L?

• 2:21:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:51Mark Gagnon?

  That battle?

• 2:21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I met him at a battle, yep.

• 2:21:53Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:21:54Speaker 00

  And nasty, just nasty.

• 2:21:55Speaker 01

  Nasty. I forgot who was there. I feel like Fat Joe might have been there back then too.

• 2:21:59Speaker 00

  Was it Uptown the battle?

• 2:22:00Speaker 01

  No, we was in DC. This is like 90.

• 2:22:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I feel like this is ninety.

• 2:22:06Speaker 01

  Outta here.

• 2:22:06Speaker 00

  And pre-written stuff or?

• 2:22:09Speaker 01

  Whatever, whatever you got.

• 2:22:10Speaker 00

  Bro, maybe the reason I like Roddy is because he had some bars that were hilarious. Like, I think a lot of the, there's a lot of dudes that battle rap now that are like genuinely.

• 2:22:20Speaker 01

  Genius is at it.

• 2:22:21Speaker 00

  Genius.

• 2:22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:23Speaker 00

  Like, I watched so many of these guys and they're phenomenal and they're funny and it's kind of like joke writing in a way.

• 2:22:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like roast jokes.

• 2:22:28Speaker 00

  It's like roast jokes, right? And, um, but he would just have these lines that would have me fucking dying, bro.

• 2:22:35Speaker 01

  No, he was good, man. He was special. Just, first of all, just like, he was my, like, he was like my man. Like, what I knew about my man is like, like, every time I saw him, I felt good. Know what I mean? Like, like, and even when Ghost saw him, who didn't know him like I knew him, he felt good.

• 2:22:55Speaker 02

  Really?

• 2:22:55Speaker 01

  Like, you know, some people was like that. Like, you see them and it's like, yo, it's my man right here.

• 2:23:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:23:00Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? He make you smile. He's real. He's still real. He wasn't no nothing but real. He's an artist and he was real. You know what I mean? And I ain't saying like, like, like I spent a thousand days with him. You know what I mean?

• 2:23:15Speaker 00

  Sure, but you felt a connection with him. You thought he was.

• 2:23:17Speaker 02

  And positive energy.

• 2:23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and special.

• 2:23:20Speaker 00

  What happens with him?

• 2:23:21Speaker 01

  And he'll bust a, look, yeah, he has sixteen ready.

• 2:23:25Speaker 00

  Anytime.

• 2:23:26Speaker 01

  He has sixteen ready for you. You want it? You know what I mean? You got it.

• 2:23:30Speaker 00

  Did you ever have to battle him?

• 2:23:32Speaker 01

  Um, I don't know. I don't know about that. I won't speak on that.

• 2:23:36Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 2:23:38Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:23:39Speaker 01

  Damn, I want to know that one.

• 2:23:41Speaker 02

  Maybe off air or something like that.

• 2:23:43Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, that's round two. That's round two. We're gonna learn a lot of stuff.

• 2:23:46Speaker 01

  He's a special dude, so let's, let's keep that specialty there.

• 2:23:49Speaker 02

  Let's do it. In, in thinking about like rap beefs, I'm so curious your perspective on the current state of hip hop and rap. Like, obviously Kendrick and Drake had this massive thing, you know, a year back. And like, I know you kind of helped Kendrick a little bit when he was first starting off, like helping him with some samples and clearing some stuff. And then obviously you and Drake, it seems like, have some relationship with like Wu-Tang Forever and things like that. So I'm curious, when you saw that going down, what was your perspective? And like, now like, things are kind of settled, what can you say about it?

• 2:24:15Speaker 01

  I mean, hip hop is a sport as well as an art form. Right? It's like chess. Chess is a sport, but it's also an art form and it's also a competition. So hip hop to me is very similar. So I thought it was great and healthy. The only thing that's, you know, that's, that's. That's we could look at that in perspective is that because it's black culture in a way, even though it's not, but it's just it is.

• 2:24:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:24:44Speaker 01

  But it is, you know what I mean? I say it's not because fuck, where's Rick Rubin? Where's Charlie Chase? You know what I mean? Charlie Chase is, um, uh, was part of the first cruise Grand Wizard Theater or some, you know, I think Charlie Chase was Puerto Rican, um, Tito from the fearless force, Puerto Rican.

• 2:24:59Speaker 00

  It's the, it's a black contribution to pop culture that has become the dominant force.

• 2:25:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, just capital C culture.

• 2:25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, but, but, but, you know, but, you know, uh, you know, the brothers put a lot in.

• 2:25:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:11Speaker 01

  No question.

• 2:25:12Speaker 00

  They created it.

• 2:25:12Speaker 01

  Right, so and because of that, um, it comes with our stigma of you stuck to my shoe, yo.

• 2:25:22Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? In the old days, you couldn't even wear a Kangol, bro.

• 2:25:27Speaker 00

  Why?

• 2:25:28Speaker 01

  You, you gotta defend that.

• 2:25:31Speaker 01

  No, serious, yo.

• 2:25:32Speaker 00

  Why do you have to wear?

• 2:25:33Speaker 01

  If you, yo, bro, you wore Kangol.

• 2:25:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:25:36Speaker 01

  In the days when hip hop was first formulating.

• 2:25:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:25:39Speaker 01

  You better be able to fight or have a gun or run fast.

• 2:25:42Speaker 00

  What am I saying when I put on my Kangol?

• 2:25:45Speaker 01

  You saying that I, I can hold this shit down, kid.

• 2:25:47Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:25:48Speaker 01

  If not, give me, give me that.

• 2:25:50Speaker 00

  I had a Kangol.

• 2:25:56Speaker 00

  Nobody stole from me, my North Face, yes.

• 2:26:00Speaker 01

  I'm saying, wait, look, how they stole your North Face? They snatched it?

• 2:26:03Speaker 00

  You had me and my buddy in a outside A and S Plaza, remember A and S Plaza?

• 2:26:08Speaker 01

  Is that, uh, Brooklyn?

• 2:26:09Speaker 00

  No, it was in, on like 34th, remember there was a mall, it was like an inside.

• 2:26:13Speaker 01

  On 34th Street?

• 2:26:14Speaker 00

  On 34th Street in Manhattan, there was like an indoor mall. I don't even know if it's still there.

• 2:26:18Speaker 01

  I don't think I went to that motherfucker.

• 2:26:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I never went.

• 2:26:20Speaker 00

  Anyway, it was by like MSG.

• 2:26:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:26:22Speaker 00

  And like, there was a little phone booth outside, this is back when we were using payphones, like call our parents and shit. And I was like fucking 11, 12 years old, a couple of kids ran up on me and him and they were like, yo, we're gonna need that. And I was the last one in my group they got robbed from.

• 2:26:34Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 2:26:35Speaker 00

  Like I watched my buddy get his Jack, his North Face backpack taken and it was like, I was front row at the Garden, bro. Oh, this is crazy, he got a knife.

• 2:26:46Speaker 02

  He thought they were gonna skip over you?

• 2:26:47Speaker 00

  I thought, I was like, I don't think they want mine. I got purple.

• 2:26:54Speaker 00

  But anyway, yeah, they got my shit.

• 2:26:55Speaker 01

  But you know what I mean, oh, but that's how hip hop was. Like, you know, you could be in that street jam and you got your, whatever you got on, you gotta be able to hold that down.

• 2:27:04Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:27:04Speaker 01

  Right, so, meaning, because of that nature of it, when a hip hop battle starts, we don't know if it's gonna always stay with the art. We don't know if it's gonna always stay on the, say, on the wax. And so that's what makes it delicate. And then when the lyrics, you know, you know, to me, when Kendrick wrote that lyric, from, to his son, I mean, to his daughter, to his mom.

• 2:27:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:27:34Speaker 01

  Yo, G.

• 2:27:36Mark Gagnon?

  He broke him apart.

• 2:27:37Speaker 01

  That was deep, bro.

• 2:27:37Mark Gagnon?

  He broke him apart, bro.

• 2:27:39Speaker 01

  That was deep, bro. I was just like, mm, mm. That's, that's, you know, that lyric was strong as Nas writing the Kormega.

• 2:27:46Mark Gagnon?

  Mm.

• 2:27:46Speaker 01

  You know, man.

• 2:27:47Speaker 00

  Oh, I thought you were gonna go ether, but...

• 2:27:49Speaker 01

  No, no, the song, the Kormega, bro. One Love? For us who lived this shit, Nas wrote one of the best rhymes in history with that and, and, and the other song that gave you power, that gave you power. He's writing from the perspective of a fucking gun.

• 2:28:05Speaker 00

  Oof, wow.

• 2:28:07Speaker 01

  Like, so, and Kendrick, to me, rose to that level when he fucking wrote this fucking letter to this dude. Um, but, now, it's, it's, it's, it becomes, it goes back to what Jay-Z said recently. It's unnecessary because it can't become personal. Can't it become back to, to, you know, Biggie and Pac? Right? You know, Pac says, "I fucked your wife, bro."

• 2:28:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. You said it kindly. You said the kindly.

• 2:28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. But still, that's a hard, so it's a rhyme. I lost my first battle to a nigga, right? I lose a lot of battles. I lost this one battle, though. I won most of my battles. Maybe two in my life I lost. But this dude, and I'm maybe, I'm 13, 14, and my name is a scientist. All my lyrics is scientifically deep, bro. I tell you how the sperm go to the zygote, mitosis, mitosis.

• 2:29:10Speaker 00

  Stabbing.

• 2:29:12Speaker 01

  All my, all my, exactly, all my shit is in there, right?

• 2:29:17Speaker 01

  I said that shit, it's girls and the whole crew, we in the, you know, it's like twenty people, bro. Yeah. And, you know, I'll go first. I said that shit, I thought I killed this nigga. This nigga said, I don't know, I forgot his name, I don't know, it was Mikey D or some shit, whatever. Nigga, my MC Mikey D, you talking that scientific shit? I make you get on the knees, nigga, and suck my fucking dick. Damn. And the crowd, ah!

• 2:29:44Speaker 01

  What? You can't say that, why'd you say that? What the fuck is this? That's the? It's not clever. There was no comeback. You can't. There's no comeback. He called you a nerd. Right. And now, and yo, and we thought about like, do we fight? You know, me and Dirty, we was like, yo, I can stab this nigga. You really? Yo, it felt, it felt, it felt, it felt deep. Yeah, cause this throwing out to suck my dick is, is, uh... Yeah, it's deep. Yeah. It's deep, but it was a lesson. That's, uh, look, you, you hear Dirty, he'll, he'll say shit like that quick after that. Yeah. By the time, you know what I mean? Yeah. I'mma bust your motherfucking ass right now. I'm the one man on my A song. And he even say it, right?

• 2:30:29Speaker 01

  You can suck my dick.

• 2:30:33Speaker 01

  He said it in his own shit. So that's what he learned from that moment, that's it? Yeah, from that moment, you learn, like, just sometime all that. Dirty said, oh, on that song, Stomp, said, niggas wanna get up and rap and rap and rap and rap and rap, man? Fuck that. That's it. That's it. Should I make us a hit?

• 2:30:51Mark Gagnon?

  That's right.

• 2:30:52Speaker 01

  I mean, sometime, but sometimes that's what resonates the most. Yeah. Damn. Um, but so going back to your question, I, I, I think hip hop is doing great, bro. Yeah, like regardless of, of what's, of what is lacking, of what, you know, that battle dead and, you know, really, you're on May, you, May fifteenth, Drake will let us know what the Iceman thinks about it. Yeah. And you'll know, by you'll know, is his talent, is his skill, is he, is he coming in Muhammad Ali?

• 2:31:24Speaker 01

  Right, I gotta be careful saying this. Because when, uh,

• 2:31:31Speaker 01

  Mike won the belt back, but I was so hurt, I was personally heartbroken when Buster Douglas.

• 2:31:38Speaker 00

  Took it from him or?

• 2:31:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, bro. Buster Douglas, I'm telling you, don't get Buster Douglas out, this motherfucker. You could get Buster Douglas.

• 2:31:46Speaker 00

  You can.

• 2:31:47Speaker 01

  You gotta be careful, bro. The dude took down the champ. You know what I mean? And nobody expected that.

• 2:31:56Speaker 00

  No.

• 2:31:57Speaker 01

  Right, so now how do you come back from that? You know what I mean? So, and I'm not saying that this was a Buster Douglas fight. This was two swordsmen at their peak. Throwing rounds for rounds for rounds for rounds.

• 2:32:11Speaker 00

  All respect to Buster Douglas, but Kendrick's not Buster Douglas.

• 2:32:13Speaker 01

  No, hell no. Kendrick is a master, Drake is a master. The two swords clash, somebody swore it broke on that one, okay? But, but he went home. Right, that's like chess, you could come back and rock another day. And so I'm so excited to see what he do with this new album. He may go, who knows what he gonna do, we gonna find out. But if he comes like lyrical back on that, bong. But if he comes back like, yo, I'm making hits, a part hits, bong. You know what I mean? So I'm excited about that. But I'm, I love hip-hop, I'm pessimistic about it. And I think that, uh...

• 2:32:47Speaker 00

  You're optimistic or pessimistic?

• 2:32:49Speaker 01

  No, see, I...

• 2:32:51Speaker 01

  I love hip-hop. I'm optimistic about it. And I think that it continues to do what it was meant to do, which is inspire, enlighten, and feed so many families.

• 2:33:00Speaker 00

  Love. Where can we see this movie, man?

• 2:33:02Speaker 01

  In theaters this weekend, May 1st.

• 2:33:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:33:07Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Theaters everywhere, go check it out.

• 2:33:09Speaker 00

  Presented by Quentin, by the way. Your homie Quentin Tarantino, so...

• 2:33:14Speaker 01

  One Spoon of Chocolate, presented by Quentin Tarantino, produced, executive producer.

• 2:33:18Speaker 00

  So it means that there are gonna be white characters saying the N-word.

• 2:33:23Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. Those are the qualifications.

• 2:33:25Speaker 01

  That's the qualification. Fama Lama.

• 2:33:27Speaker 00

  Feet?

• 2:33:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, some feet. Wait, is that feet?

• 2:33:30Speaker 00

  No, I was disappointed.

• 2:33:34Speaker 00

  I'm a man of culture like Quentin.

• 2:33:35Speaker 01

  Right. You wanna see some feet? Hey Bobby, no feet in this fucking movie, buddy.

• 2:33:40Speaker 02

  Can you send us out on one more story?

• 2:33:41Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, please.

• 2:33:43Speaker 02

  You were telling me before that there was a time that you went to Shanghai.

• 2:33:46Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 2:33:47Speaker 02

  And you had to try to figure out a bathroom situation.

• 2:33:49Speaker 01

  So you want a story or a rhyme? Or lyric?

• 2:33:51Speaker 00

  All of it. All of it, all of it.

• 2:33:54Speaker 01

  Okay, then, I'll give you some more to fuck with. I'm gonna start with a story, then I'm gonna see if I got one bar for you.

• 2:33:59Speaker 00

  Oh, yes.

• 2:34:00Speaker 01

  Chop up, okay.

• 2:34:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:34:01Speaker 01

  So, no, we was talking about, you know, filming, you know, just so One Spoon of Chocolate is my fourth feature film. And my first film was called The Man With The Iron Fist. And I shot that in China.

• 2:34:15Speaker 01

  Russell Crowe, Dave Bautista, Lucy Liu, such a great cast, right? But in 2010, 2011, when we was doing the film, the, outside of Shanghai, all the bathrooms still had the stand-up joints. And you gotta squat to plot, you know what I mean?

• 2:34:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen them.

• 2:34:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, they still got them?

• 2:34:37Speaker 00

  In parts of southern France.

• 2:34:39Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 2:34:40Speaker 02

  Can you bring this up? I don't know.

• 2:34:42Speaker 01

  So that means that you shitting, bro?

• 2:34:44Speaker 00

  There's a hole in the ground, bro.

• 2:34:45Speaker 01

  Hole in the ground, or, but even a hole in a toilet. I mean, not in the toilet, but like, like you go into a stall.

• 2:34:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:34:52Speaker 01

  And you squat and you plot, right?

• 2:34:54Speaker 02

  Oh, what if you got bad knees?

• 2:34:56Speaker 01

  You gotta be strong, bro.

• 2:34:58Speaker 00

  They don't got bad knees in China, bro.

• 2:35:00Speaker 02

  They just like squatting on the street and shit like that all the time.

• 2:35:05Speaker 00

  Boom.

• 2:35:06Speaker 02

  What?

• 2:35:06Speaker 01

  So, so check it out, right?

• 2:35:08Speaker 02

  That's a nice one.

• 2:35:08Speaker 01

  That's a nice one, yeah.

• 2:35:09Speaker 02

  I wouldn't even know what to do.

• 2:35:10Speaker 01

  But go back, go back to that one, that top, top fourth one there?

• 2:35:13Speaker 00

  Right here?

• 2:35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35:15Speaker 00

  Yup, there you go.

• 2:35:16Speaker 02

  What?

• 2:35:17Speaker 00

  Little grate so you don't slip.

• 2:35:18Speaker 01

  That's a nice one as well. There wasn't that nice back, back, back, back when I went there, right? But here's the punchline. So now, I'm bringing over 20 Americans as heads of departments and things of that nature. So, we like, yo, we can't, first of all, I'm the most finickyest bathroom user you gonna ever meet, bro. That shit is on my rider. What's on your record? I gotta have a personal, clean, private space, bro. Yeah, yeah. That's mine. Yeah, yeah. Nobody else could use it. You know what I mean? You gotta mark me off my space. Yeah. Very... You had ten siblings growing up, so now... Bro, I need my own, bro.

• 2:36:02Speaker 01

  Bro, I had, on my, on my TV show, my, I had, I had a trailer. That was, that's my dumper, right? And my, my younger brother, who really doesn't really respect me as the RZA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And maybe not even as his big brother, because first mind you, he's like fucking Little Hercules looking motherfucker, black Superman, two inches taller. Oh, wow. Muscles. Jacked. Bench about 350, 400. Oh, shit. Right? Um, so, but regardless, he's still my little brother. Yeah. Younger brother. So, bro, would you believe that we get to set, I go and say, I'm gonna get breakfast for everybody, get breakfast, I give him breakfast and everything, and then I had to go and, and do some fucking, you know,

• 2:36:47Speaker 01

  check the monitor, whatever. He didn't do it. Bro. He didn't do it. The dude goes in my fucking trailer. No. And blows it up. No.

• 2:36:57Speaker 01

  No. I came in there, bro.

• 2:37:01Speaker 01

  Yo, I kicked him off set.

• 2:37:05Speaker 01

  I banned him. Yo. Too much Seshwan, bro. Yo, yo, he had a job. He, I had him working at security. He got fired that day, bro. No way. I said, yo, bro, you know, I only got one fucking rule. That's it. Don't use my fucking bathroom.

• 2:37:23Speaker 01

  So, so going back to China, right? So, so we said, okay, let's build a Western bathroom. Yeah, that's a reasonable thing. And we do. Yeah. So, we build it, and we build with urinals, and we build with toilets. Great. Right? Of course, you know how Western bathroom is. You walk in the bathroom, what's first? Urinal.

• 2:37:42Speaker 00

  Then toilets.

• 2:37:42Speaker 01

  Okay. So. Day six, seven, whatever. Uh, Rick Yun, another actor, he's an Asian actor. He's in the film as well, he plays, uh, Zingy. He comes into the lunchroom, also had a separate lunchroom, because in China, lunch is whatever you, you open it and whatever's in that motherfucker.

• 2:38:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:38:02Speaker 01

  I had a catered lunch, so you working with me, you got, you could choose to motherfucking things.

• 2:38:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:38:07Speaker 01

  So Rick comes to lunch, and he's just like, yo, bro.

• 2:38:12Speaker 01

  I'm disappointed, man. So what you mean, so disappointed in my people, bro? That's what you fucking talking about, bro, we having a great time, no, bro. I just came from the bathroom, bro. Yeah, Ed? Yo, bro. Somebody shit it in the urinal.

• 2:38:34Speaker 01

  I don't believe him, bro. I can't believe, I'm like, nah, I can't.

• 2:38:40Speaker 01

  I like, that don't sound like, it don't make sense.

• 2:38:43Speaker 02

  It's not scientifically possible. It's not scientifically possible, like, how you even do that?

• 2:38:47Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying? I don't believe him. Four days later. I go to bathroom.

• 2:38:54Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no.

• 2:38:56Speaker 01

  Two of them shits, bro.

• 2:38:59Speaker 01

  I'm like, what the fuck, I don't get it, I couldn't. But, I understood what happened, we should have put the urinals. Secondly.

• 2:39:08Speaker 00

  They got too excited at the urinals, they thought it was a fancy toilet. They're like, I don't even gotta squat no more, it's high.

• 2:39:16Speaker 01

  Yo, I'm not exaggerating this shit, I'm not making it up, bro. I just learned a lot about culture there.

• 2:39:23Speaker 00

  Alright, we need the bar now, we need the bar.

• 2:39:26Speaker 01

  Let's see what I got.

• 2:39:28Speaker 02

  That'd be hard to do.

• 2:39:30Speaker 01

  You gotta arch up and shit.

• 2:39:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I can imagine if it starts to flush, it doesn't go, and you're like, uh-oh.

• 2:39:37Speaker 01

  So. Give me a, give me a, uh. What kind of bar you would like?

• 2:39:42Speaker 00

  Oh dude, yes, that's.

• 2:39:44Speaker 02

  And you, you, you, it's on you. You're the architect, bro. In a notes app too, right?

• 2:39:49Speaker 01

  Yes, it is. Yeah.

• 2:39:51Mark Gagnon?

  That's what I'm saying. Every day he still means that's fine.

• 2:39:54Speaker 02

  You heard his orchestra album? He did a whole album with the Denver Orchestra.

• 2:39:57Mark Gagnon?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:39:58Speaker 02

  It's just a whole on orchestral piece.

• 2:40:03Speaker 01

  I gotta give you something good, because I got a feeling that that um somebody gonna see it, you know?

• 2:40:11Speaker 01

  Okay, so, so this particular bar, right? Was supposed to be, so at the end of my movie, One Spoon of Chocolate.

• 2:40:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:40:17Speaker 01

  There's a song that comes on that um that uh my buddy Bacon uh produced with, produced and I rhymed on. And he gave me this track a while ago. And in the track, the hook says, "Maybe your God is something like my God."

• 2:40:33Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:40:34Speaker 01

  Right? It says, "All the bullets and the guns we use like to hide our lies." You know what I mean? It says, "Maybe your soul," I'm just, I'm paraphrasing, "Maybe your soul is like my soul." "We all suffer in the past and nothing ever lasts forever." "Maybe we can pray together and see eye to eye that your God and my God is the same God."

• 2:41:03Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:41:03Speaker 01

  Right? And then I wrote a verse for it, which we didn't use.

• 2:41:06Speaker 02

  His name is Bacon?

• 2:41:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41:11Speaker 02

  It's gonna get hard for Muslims and Jews to get a word with this.

• 2:41:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:41:17Speaker 01

  How about some bacon?

• 2:41:18Speaker 02

  Turkey bacon, it's turkey bacon.

• 2:41:19Speaker 01

  Turkey bacon, yeah. So, "But who could split the atom into 10,000 pieces?" My thesis, it can be achieved through telekinesis. We was made from this image. We could trace all ourselves to the same lineage. We all have the same arm, leg, leg, arm, head appendages.

• 2:41:38Speaker 01

  We fought scores of wars with hordes of men carrying shields and swords, guns and missiles in the name of the Lord. And they gave him a thousand names. But the birds, the bees, the sea and the trees, the sun and the moon and the stars, they see him as the same. Genderless, creator of the Genesis without a nemesis. The one with no beginning or ending, omnipotent. But we separate ourselves on borders and believe the lies our forefathers taught us. Even the Arabs were subjugating their women and burying their daughters, hiding inside of castles made of brick and mortar. Then built cities that polluted very air and water. From the Spanish inquisitions, the crusade, Muslims against the Christians,

• 2:42:23Speaker 01

  Buddhists against the Daoists, Hindus and superstition. All prowess or power attacking the powerless. Is this an act of war or an act of cowardice? The inability to accept we all showered by the same rays of the sun, days of the month. We all start off smaller than a microdot and grow from old to young. We all walk with two legs and speak from one tongue. I prefer to drop love while some prefer to drop bombs. At the barbecue, my aunt and uncle used to argue about what God would do.

• 2:42:55Speaker 01

  What you should do. What they expect God to do, but doing for themselves was hard to do. The solution could be if we just came together, but they didn't bother to. We played together as kids. On the military, we slay together. Politically, we can hate together. But why don't we just get on our knees and simply pray together? Stand together, face each other and see eye to eye without shame and proclaim, "Me be your God and my God are the same."

• 2:43:27Mark Gagnon?

  Mmm, that's fine.

• 2:43:31Speaker 00

  The risen.

• 2:43:32Speaker 01

  Bung, bung.

• 2:43:33Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:34Speaker 00

  The ghost, man.

• 2:43:35Mark Gagnon?

  This was an honor, brother.

• 2:43:36Speaker 00

  Thank you so much. I'm sorry to steal that one, my bad.

• 2:43:39Mark Gagnon?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:39Speaker 00

  Thank you so much. Bro, thank you so much, man. This is amazing. Make sure you guys go check out the movie.

• 2:43:44Speaker 01

  Yes, tickets on sale now, everywhere. Tickets on sale right now, one spoon of chocolate, bung, bung.

• 2:43:49Speaker 00

  Go check it out, and you got more coming as well, right?

• 2:43:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm on a mission.

• 2:43:52Speaker 00

  I love it, I love it. And when you have been on a mission in the past, it's been incredibly fruitful. So we look, we look forward to indulging in this fruit, my friend.

• 2:43:59Speaker 01

  Thank you, thanks for inviting me.

• 2:44:00Speaker 00

  My man, this is awesome.

• 2:44:02Speaker 01

  Thank you.