Hey Smiling Strange

Te’Jani

• Kyle Rosse • Season 1 • Episode 33

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0:00 | 1:11:08

I talk to Te’Jani (@middlenametj) about using motivation, the eternal battle of shape rotators and wordcels, and being a black man in indie rock. 


Check out Shirtless wherever you listen to music, like and follow him on social media. Buy a T-shirt. Idk, this was a fun conversation and I want this kid to get the recognition his music deserves. 


Thank you to How Strange It Is for the intro/outro music. 

SPEAKER_00

I want to say artists, I don't know exactly what to call the genre of music. Real quick, though, before we get to him, I'm going to keep them waiting because I have to do my little ad read. Again, I want to remind people that this podcast is part of what I call the worst marketing strategy of all time. I have a fantasy football app built around the methodology, the mechanics of Mario Kart, where the better you're doing, the harder the game is, the worse you're doing, the easier the game is. It's meant to make trading easier and to make it so that people don't quit halfway through. It's meant for people that don't really play fantasy football. So if you've never really played, if you just want to support me, go to clubhouse.gg, K-L-U-B-H-O-U-S-E. The more people that sign up and give me my email address, the more likely it is I can somehow make some money off of that app. And then I don't have to make money off of this. I can just do this for free. So uh if you like any of the stuff that I do, please support it. That's my stupid ad read, plug, whatever. Anyway, to Johnny, how's it going, man?

SPEAKER_02

I'm good, man. I'm good, man. A little tired, but you know, I've been saying that a lot. I've been saying a lot. I'm gonna remove that from my vocabulary. How am I doing? Um my god. Uh that is all I'm doing, really, though. I'm so tired.

SPEAKER_00

That's right. That's right, man. That's right. Is it good tired or you just old tired, you know? Oh, are you busy?

SPEAKER_02

Dude, I haven't honestly I haven't felt the zest of life in a while, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01

Overrated, really.

SPEAKER_02

Before the pod, we're talking about like looking at doorknobs, and now it's like an exciting weekend, and I'm like, you know what? That does sound like a great weekend.

SPEAKER_00

Dude, uh my wife and I talk all the time about we went to IKEA once on a Monday night in the last like 45 minutes before they closed down. And one, it's like the backrooms. You're in there, there's nobody in there. But two, it's like that was one of the best date nights of our entire life. We had the entire IKEA to ourselves at a very calm. We talk about going just on a midweek, right before close IKEA trip all the time, like it's going to Disney World. Like, I don't know what happened in my life. I used to be cool. I I want to say I used to be cool. I feel like a lot of people would have something to say about me saying that I used to be cool at some point, but I'm definitely way less cool even if I wasn't cool back then. That's all I know.

SPEAKER_01

Dude, I IKEA IKEA day does not sound bad, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00

It's not bad as long as you recognize as long as there's a power dynamic, right? I think with decorating a house, you have a director and then you have the help. You know, I recognized a long time ago my role in decorating my house, emotional support, because she has a lot of uh tough decisions to make, and I don't know what looks good or not. Um and you know, now I live in this house. Look at these little knickknacks behind me, man. It's like I live in an iSpy. The whole house is filled with stuff like that. But it took a lot of me coming up to her at thrift stores where she's holding like two baskets and looking confused, and giving her a hug and telling her it's gonna be okay, you know.

SPEAKER_02

Pretty much everything in my house is functional, but I live I still live like I'm 19. You can see puton in the back, there's a MIDI keyboard, yeah. It's some sound panels. Yeah, it's it's heinous in here to be honest.

SPEAKER_00

I just put my N64 away because we had company coming over, and I was like, I can't have the the N64 in the C because I have to do it on the CRT too. I can't do it on the digital TV because there's too much delay. Gotta do it old school, man. Gotta do it old school. But uh yeah, man. Uh we got in touch. Uh Summit Sounds is this guy on uh Instagram who makes Summit. There we go. I should get that right. Uh and he, you know, he's been following my reels for a little bit. We talk every once in a while. He's a really cool guy. Seems to like seems like he's got a very good taste in music, and he apparently just makes guitar pedals for artists that he thinks are really cool. A couple of weeks ago, he's like, hey, I know a bunch of guys that I made pedals for. Do you want me to uh reach out to any of them, see if they want to be on the podcast? And that's how we got in touch. Uh we were just trying to figure out neither of us know his actual name. We just know this guy on Instagram who seems pretty chill.

SPEAKER_02

Mystery guy or gal or dude person. It's yeah, it's pretty sick. Pretty, pretty sick. Uh I actually have it right here.

SPEAKER_00

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's it's wild. Like, I never thought I'd have my own like signature pedal, which is nice. That's ins. That's honestly insane. Like, so crazy. Like I took it on the road with me when I went to DC in New York, and like I should have been a little bit more protective over it. I got it chipped a little bit, but like this thing is like never leaving my house, like ever after that. I broke, I actually broke it. I actually broke one of the blue knobs on there, and then I had to, yeah, I had to fix it, but it's all good now. It's all good now.

SPEAKER_00

You gotta have a little bit of flavor on these things. They gotta they gotta be used, you know. If it's pristine, that means you're not it's not well loved, you know? You gotta chip it and all that.

SPEAKER_02

But uh yeah, how long you've been definitely passing this down to my children. Well, actually, I don't know. I'm probably not gonna have kids, but I don't think there's a one- I don't think there's a woman on earth who wants to wants to sleep with a dude who's still sleeps on a food tongue.

SPEAKER_00

So dude, I this is my thought process. If there weren't women that wanted to do that, I just don't think society would advance. I just don't think there's any way, you know, when my wife met me, my bed was on the floor, you know. I thought it looked good too. I thought I was doing a good job. All my clothes were in a uh You weren't pushing 30 though, were you? What was I? I was like 27, 26, 27 when I met my my wife, so it's close enough, man. It's close enough.

SPEAKER_02

I'm always like I'm always like, all right, you're either gonna be hot, you're gonna be funny, or you're gonna have money. And I'm like, well. You gotta pick two, you know what I mean? And uh we're leading towards hot and funny right now. The hot is on its way out. I'm trying to keep funny alive for as long as possible.

SPEAKER_00

So no, you gotta get that George Clooney thing going, you know? You're just uh hot and funny older guy. He's got the money too, so obviously, you know, maybe not the best.

SPEAKER_02

I gotta wait 30 years and get a couple Oscars before I can uh talk to women. Yeah.

unknown

Probably.

SPEAKER_00

I'm not gonna say you have to get a couple of Oscars. I will say, definitely would help you out if you got a couple Oscars under your belt. I will say that. That's the standard.

SPEAKER_02

You have to be in Toy Story in order to get a date nowadays. That's what it feels like.

SPEAKER_00

Put it on the put it on the Bumble account. I don't know. I have no idea how anybody dates these days. I have I've been.

SPEAKER_02

Is George Clooney in Toy Story?

SPEAKER_00

Sure, why not? I don't know enough about movies, man. Hold on. I think it's uh my god, I wanted to say Woody Allen. It's Tim Allen and Tom Hanks. But Am I wrong? I don't know, there's five of them. There's five of those movies. I wouldn't be surprised. He's not in it. He's not in it.

SPEAKER_02

It's Tim Allen, that's what I'm thinking of.

SPEAKER_00

My favorite George Clooney appearance is he's in an episode of South Park, and they just made him play a dog, and all he says is bark. He doesn't even play a talking dog, he just plays a regular dog. So perfect.

SPEAKER_02

You know what? You know what movie has the craziest cameos in it? It's uh Lego movie. If you look up, if you look up all the cast members, like it's it's so many of your favorite actors. It's crazy. It's so funny. And that movie, that movie is like so good, dude. I remember I watched it, I watched it with one of my buddies like illegally. Like we streamed it at the house, and my dad was like, dude, I grew up super Christian, and my dad is like all about the rules and rules and stuff, and he like stopped the movies. Like, where are you guys watching this? And I'm like, Oh, it's just on the internet. And he goes, The FBI can he literally looks me, me and my friend, dead in the eyes. He goes, the FBI can be watching us, and they can knock down our door right now. And I'm like, I'm I'm like 15 or 16, and I'm just like, no one's gonna like barge in the house and arrest us for watching Lego movie illegally. I was yeah, yeah, anyways.

SPEAKER_00

That's one of those things that I think is a major generational gap, is that like the boomer generation or whatever, your parents' generation, they like they're like the FBI could be watching you, and then they definitely are. Well, that's the thing. The reaction from all the younger people are like, well, obviously they could be watching us. I could have been watched my entire life. I just don't think they're finding anything interesting to follow. I think I'm too fucking boring. Like I'm they're watching everybody all the time. Everything we do is consent for people to like watch something of it.

SPEAKER_02

It's like when they fear monger about like, oh yeah, I should have told them don't be a brood. Let me drink my cream stone and watch a Lego movie in peace. Please.

SPEAKER_00

Also, it's just it's a good movie, and watching stuff illegally is uh it's that's the appropriate reaction to the internet is like, well, I can get it for free. Cool, so now it's free. The movie is now free, you know? The Lego company doesn't need my $15, you know.

SPEAKER_02

You know my uh yeah, true. Also, dude, there's a there's a there's a song that Batman sings. He's like, You want to listen to my mixtape or whatever? And he and the song says, the song goes, Darkness, no parents. It's just like heavy guitars underneath it. It is the dude, that movie's legendary.

SPEAKER_01

It's so good. It's so good. I need to watch that actually. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00

Is there a second Lego movie? I know there's a Lego Batman movie. I watched that on an airplane once. Uh if there is no Lego movie too, I'm a little disappointed because it's like I genuinely enjoyed the hell out of the Lego movie. Yeah, there is.

SPEAKER_03

There is.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, I haven't seen the sequel. Now I got something to do this weekend. Well, I plan IKEA trips and shit like that. You know?

SPEAKER_02

Hit the IKEA, get you some meatballs, get a little sleepy, you know, drive home, put Lego Movie 2 on, have yourself a good night, man, on a new sofa.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, that's the way to go. This is what I mean. The reason I want to have kids is like I just want to watch TV shows and movies that otherwise I would avoid. You know, I didn't say Lego Movie 2. If I had kid, I'd be like, no, no, we're taking you out of school to watch this thing, man. Come on.

SPEAKER_01

Interesting motivation to have kids, but hey, you do what you gotta do to move the move the human race forward, I guess.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, someone's gotta do it. And and somebody's gotta be that weird dad of some. I feel like maybe I'm gonna be weird enough that my kids turn into like accountants or something like that. They're just gonna be like, oh yeah, yeah. You know? They're gonna rebel.

SPEAKER_02

I feel like that's what happens. It's like it's always the opposite. Like, if you're too strict, they become very uh just like I don't care about the rules, I'm gonna just do what I want to do, and then you know, I don't know. At least that's what's happened to me. Actually, that's not even true. The rest of my family, like, all my siblings are very like like one like works in healthcare, my brother works, like he's like a computer programmer, the other one's like a teacher or slash social worker. Like, yeah, none of them, all of them are pretty like about the rules.

SPEAKER_00

And where are you in the in the pecking order?

SPEAKER_02

I'm the youngest.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, so you're the youngest, and at that point, well that's that's one of those things. The family was probably just like, alright, stable job, alright, stable job, alright, stable job. Okay, we're three for four, no matter what he does. He can do music now. He could go and and run off and and go do whatever he wants. Is that the the vibe? Kind of.

SPEAKER_02

I guess. Because this wasn't my first, this wasn't my I mean, okay, that's not true. Music was definitely my first passion, but the first thing I got like extremely talented at that people could see. I was a I ran track in high school in college. My mom, my mom ran in college as well. Yeah, yeah. Uh I literally saw no way out. I, you know, my parents, you know, they you know encouraged me or whatever to play guitar or whatever. I don't know. Who knows? They weren't, they weren't, they weren't they weren't like the the most encouraging or whatever, but uh when it came to track, it just seemed like an obvious path of just like okay, go get a scholarship, go run, and then you know, yeah, see what happens after that, get yourself a job after that, you know.

SPEAKER_00

So how early into your track running did you kind of know, like, alright, well I'm gonna go to college because I'm really fast.

SPEAKER_02

Um you always hoped, but it wasn't until I think I think I knew pretty early on. Because my my my high school coach, he ran in college as well, and he was telling me times he ran, like, you know, as a as a freshman, as a sophomore, and I was already running like faster than that. And um by my junior year I had won a couple state championships and um I had I had was that my junior year? Yeah, my junior year actually, yeah, that's right. I was gonna quit my junior year because one of my training partners he graduated. And um yeah, it was I remember this like back when I was Christian. I literally like I prayed to God, I was like, alright, this season I'm gonna decide if I want to like run track or like keep doing music. And like I was working super hard, but I was running solo basically with no one to push me in practice, and I was just like, Alright, I'm gonna just see how this one goes, and this is gonna decide if I should keep going or not. And uh I dropped like the seventh fastest time in the nation that day.

SPEAKER_00

Damn.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it was pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_00

Um man, so so basically God's coming down telling you you should be running track, and you're still doing music anyway.

SPEAKER_02

You're just uh Oh no, I I I I I let track run its course for sure.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I feel you.

SPEAKER_02

You know, we uh we we we did we did pretty well in college, but um nice.

SPEAKER_00

How does track recruiting work? Do they like I played soccer in college, right? I played soccer and basketball and all that uh there's a recruiting process of that in track. Is that like uh this is the first time it's ever occurred to me. Is it really easy to recruit somebody in track? Yeah, because you just get all of their times.

SPEAKER_02

There's yeah, that's that's the easy part about it. But the problem is uh there's less scholarships for um Yeah, yeah. Let me back up. So the recruiting process, basically, all of your times have to be you pretty much have to be fast by your junior year.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So if you're if you're if and like it sucks because track is in the spring, like if it were like in the fall, if it were in the fall, that would give you a little more time, but like if you're not gonna get a sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00

Oh that sucks, dude.

SPEAKER_02

All all the scholarships are dealt out basically by like like it's like winter of um your senior year. So luckily, luckily I had dropped that fast time as a junior. Uh I ran like 230 in the 1K, and then um uh yeah, a couple of I think I ran like I think I ran like 421 or something like that. All I'm hearing is 420.

SPEAKER_00

All I'm hearing is 420.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. But uh yeah, so it's really easy like compared to other sports because it's literally just stats. It's just like, did you run the time? Did you run the time? Yeah. And then but they're also looking at like, okay, are they a cross-country runner? Can they run, you know, 5K, 8K, 10k? Um, are they just a miler? Are they just a sprinter? Are they just uh distance? Can we make them into whatever? You know, it's basically where where do they fit for the team, right? And the hard part is a lot of times, like I said, scholarships aren't really like one, it's not very much for track athletes. Umly because most schools have uh it's uh football, football teams.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Because there's no you know how this works, but you know, for those listeners, for Title IX, it's basically saying like you have to have like equal opportunity for both men and women's sports, and because you know a football team has like 49 scholarships or whatever, they have that has to get balanced out somewhere, and typically it's on like track or like swimming or you know, you know, uh sports like that. Um soccer's pretty much safe.

SPEAKER_00

Uh yeah, but um I think I there's uh I know NCAA there's like NCAA women's rowing. I have a bunch of kids at my school were into crew. You know, our school uh had a very good crew team because it was a very fancy little New England private school or whatever. And uh there was no scholarships for men's crew, but NCAA women's crew, so that was another one. It was the same thing. They they have to like balance out the fact that every big school in the country has fifty football scholarships a year, you know?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. But the school I didn't go to didn't have a football team and they had a good distance team. So it was it was kind of perfect setup for me. However, I hated I hated my coach the first two years, and then I hated the head coach. And uh the school itself was just didn't lend itself to me at all. And then I found a school, I found a school that would have been perfect for me. It's called Academy of Art. I mean, yo, if any kid is like wanting to run track but is also good at music or wants to learn like audio stuff, Academy of Art, like yo, that school looks so sick. I well I could have transferred there and I would have been like one of their best guys, but because they're Division II, the head coach wouldn't sign off on my transfer. And like that literally could have changed my life, and like I'm I'm to this day, I'm still so pissed at that dude for that. And um yeah, it pisses me off so much. I like I had a grudge, like a like sometimes it would just pop in my head and I would just get just angry. I would just get pissed off. And that maybe died maybe like two and a half years ago. And I'm like uh four years out of college, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Are you like a spite-driven guy? Oh yeah, yeah. Did you feel that spite? Did you like hit the studio extra hard?

SPEAKER_02

I have a song called Haters, and it is one of the best songs I've ever made, bro. And yeah, I can't wait for that song to come out.

SPEAKER_00

But let me know. I'll bump it.

SPEAKER_02

I you know, I thrive, I love competition, I thrive off of it, I think. Um it's probably a little uh it's probably not as it probably doesn't burn as pure if it's fuel, you know, versus like love of the love of the love of the game, love of music versus like, oh, this person doesn't think I'm good enough. I'm like, alright, I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna alright, my videos, I'm gonna get my videos up, I'm gonna get my guitar playing up, I'm gonna get my melodies up, I'm gonna start rapping, I'm gonna just like literally just skate circles around you so you know I'm better than you.

SPEAKER_00

Like just shove them just shove them down.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly. Low-key, like that's how it is, but you know, unfortunately, music doesn't work like uh sports where it's just like you can't go 1v1, it's just like alright, this is what I can do, and hopefully people like it. Uh I mean bar for bar though, skill for skill. I feel like I'm one of the best, like to be honest. Like, I just can't, you know, there's no denying it. Like, we I do a lot over here.

SPEAKER_00

So fucking love the confidence. Like, you should think you're good at what you're doing if you're gonna do this. Until I've heard the music, man. You are good. What I really uh thank you.

SPEAKER_02

I wish my brain the problem is I wish my brain believed it. Like my body doesn't believe that every time I open up Ableton, I'm like, man, I suck at this. I don't know. Like, what am I doing? Like even now, like it's crazy. Like, you know, last year I got DM'd a DM from Travis Barker. I'd only been playing drums for like a year, year and a half or so. And I'm like, that should like make my ego go through the roof, or at least like at least lower the like like raise the the floor on my confidence, but it doesn't. I just feel very just like like I'm like swimming around, but you know, whatever. I just I just I'm I just have to ignore the feeling and just like try to focus on joy rather than like skill, if that makes sense, you know.

SPEAKER_00

I I talk to people about that uh a good amount because it's like there is this weird thing. If you're trying to be an artist, you're trying to be like successful, you're trying to hit some sort of metric that you think is gonna make you feel happy. Like, it's a common thing throughout history. You if you even achieve the goals you set out to achieve, the feeling of achieving it is not reciprocal to the amount you wanted it, and you kind of think it is as you're chasing it. You're like, oh, when I get that, it's gonna feel as good as all this has felt bad. That's not how it works. You get it, it feels kind of good. It doesn't resolve everything, and then you have to keep like moving on with your life. But so I'm talking a lot.

SPEAKER_02

I'm really bad at that latter half moving on.

SPEAKER_00

That's the hard part. And it's like the thing I was talking to some people about is uh just this idea of like I think for a lot of people, and especially it sounds like you have a bit of a drive thing where it's like you're a very driven guy, you want to succeed. Part of uh when I talk to people that are very driven, a lot of those people are driven more by like kind of a negative force than a positive force. Like they want something, but as they're doing it, they'll be like, you know, if if you're training for a marathon, they're like, I'm not running fast enough, I didn't train hard enough, I didn't work as hard as I possibly could have all the time. And so that whole time you have this kind of negative voice in your head.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I've been trying uh my life, you know, the last couple of years. I actually learned this from uh do you ever watch Super Smash Brothers, professional Super Smash Brothers melee?

SPEAKER_02

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, so you know who Zayn is? He's like the number one player in the world, and he was playing against Mango, and they're doing like a friendlies thing, and he does like a cool combo, and he's like, Yes, Zane, that was sick. And then Mango makes fun of him and he goes, Well, I talk to like a sports psychologist. It's like, if I only negatively criticize myself, and I don't give myself little like positive boosts here and there and try to believe the positive boost as much as I believe the negative thing, then all I hear is the negative. So it's like it's good to feel good about, you know, like you're saying, you don't have to develop a huge ego because Travis Barker hit you up on a DM or something like that, but you can give yourself a little fist bump and be like, fuck yeah, I am good. He he does recognize my talent, I am the fucking man, even for a little bit, just so you have something positive going, you know.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. I it's crazy because like I'll still get DM. I don't know. I think my li I don't know, maybe I'm a little depressed right now or something. I I I don't think depressed is the right way to do that.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my god, an artist that's a little depressed, that'd be crazy.

SPEAKER_02

My my I feel like my emotions are just on mute right now. Like I I don't feel like when I was younger or even Like a couple years ago, I would feel extreme like highs and you know, extreme feelings of just like you know, whether it was like euphoria or happiness or just like pride or joy or you know, even anger or sadness, whatever. Like it's like everything is just like on mute as if it can't go above like you know, the wavelength has been compressed, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

That wavelength has got compressed.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think maybe it's good because I'm less reckless, but at the same time, I'm definitely not as like let's go get that for this, you know, type of like vibe. Like, and like I've been going hard for a year, like a year straight. Like last year around this time, medicine popped off, and I was like, all right, let me just grind and just like focus as hard as I can. And like been working like you know, 11-hour days, 14-hour days, 15-hour days, 16-hour days, on top of like setting up shows, like trying to play Nashville and going up to DC and New York, and going out to LA and you know, basically doing like editing videos and shooting videos with homies and still recording stuff, making that like I was doing so much, and that that probably is like the thing that burned me out, like unfortunately. Yeah, like I needed I needed to work that much just to live, but like um, yeah, I think it's like finally caught up with me, and like my body's just like, yeah, we can't do this anymore, buddy. We gotta we gotta figure out a way to delegate some tasks. But to go back on what you said though about like drive and motivation and stuff like that, like I think and like being motivated by negative things, like yeah, I think that's I think that'll get you a certain to a certain point and it'll burn, but it's gonna like burn out pretty quick. But like I've been going through this book, it's actually it's actually right here. It's called uh The Way of Excellence by Brad Stolberg. He has a podcast with like uh yeah, he's uh he's like a like a strength and conditioning coach, and like I think he's a track coach as well, but he uh hosts podcasts with my favorite coaches, Steve Magnus, who is like a really really well-known track and field coach. And uh yeah, he just talks about like like the philosophy behind like achieving excellence, like what it is, and um and like he he he explains like it's more like not to get like too heady or whatever, but like the book is called the The Way of Excellence. It's more of like a way of being rather than like here's the goal, and once I achieve the goal, then I'm excellent. It's just like believing like believing that you uh the the the the path towards mastery is going to make you the best version of yourself. So you know that that you know you gotta be honest with yourself and real and that's that's something that's they really talk about. You have to be um again leaning into joy. Um it's not like this this very loud vibrato like thumping your chest type of greatness that people portray. It's not a Nike commercial, but it's you know it's exactly like like like I said before, like it's refining yourself, removing things from your life, and allowing yourself to be the best that you can be. Um and learning things about yourself. I think the the you have to you have to understand like the long game behind everything. I think that's sort of what I've been learning in this chapter of like being in the band and you know trying to be a good team captain, trying to, you know, make sure I'm making the right decision and wise decisions with uh you know the way the band is going, uh what we need to prioritize, and um you know just how I'd lead the band and stuff like that. I think I think about these things a lot. It's just like okay what parts of myself are not serving me, and typically those same things are not the things that are serving the band or the path that I'm on. So I have to like focus on those things or um you know make adjustments here and there. And uh, you know, I've been I've been trying to be kinder to myself. That's why that'd be good advice, man.

SPEAKER_00

Definitely be kind to yourself. One question I want to ask uh is like so you know, I love this idea of greatness, obviously. Um I think when I played a lot of sports, it was kind of very evident what greatness was. You won the game, you were better than the people on the field, something like that. Uh I think for me personally, right, I grew up playing high-level competitive soccer and played basketball and uh just played sports non-stop for years. I never really thought of a why though. I just did it because I was good at it, you know. I was 10 years old, I was good at soccer goalkeeper or whatever. I won a State Cup when I was like 11, right? So I was good at these things. And music was my way of kind of encountering the why of it all, right? I wasn't very good at music when I started playing it. Some would argue I'm not very good at it now, but I'm having a good time.

SPEAKER_02

Uh hey, that's what matters.

SPEAKER_00

You know, for you, man, when you you talk, you're very obviously very driven guy, right? You have these goals that you want to set. What is the why of it? Why greatness? Why is that the thing that you're trying to achieve here?

SPEAKER_02

Uh two things. Uh I already the one thing I mentioned before, you know, I want to become the best version of myself, you know, for for for my bandmates, for my teammates, you know, for uh, you know, my family, for, you know, my wife if I ever have one, or my kid if I ever have one, you know.

SPEAKER_00

So you're talking to like you in the future a little bit, you know? Yeah. You want to be able to look them in the eye and be like, hey man, this is I did this for you, you know?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think I I think in parallels a lot. I think a lot of the same decisions I make now are it's gonna be the same way I make decisions later, you know. Um and I I feel the same. I feel honestly, you know, I was team captain of a lot of teams uh in high school and college. That makes sense. It's a lot of the same. I feel the same pressure, I feel the same uh uh what's the word I'm looking for?

SPEAKER_00

Responsibility, man.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_00

You want uh you wear the crown, you know. I was uh I was the captain of my soccer team and uh two-time captain of my basketball team because we were a hockey school, so very, very poor basketball players.

SPEAKER_02

Um then two, um, you know, for black kids, young black kids, man, there's I there's literally there's only a handful of black kids in indie rock that are doing at a high level, that are playing guitar, that are recording, that are mixing, that are playing shows, that are like actually doing the doing the thing, you know. And I'd like to show, you know, for young kids whether, you know, just be an inspiration, like, yo, this is possible, there is a way, and you can win the right way. Like, and understanding like your way is probably the right way. Like, you got you like like I struggle with this a lot where I try to adopt other people's mindset of how they approach things, and I have to realize like, yo, like, like both LeBron and Michael Jordan are great players, right? Right? Yeah, to put it in sports context, but they don't play the same way at all.

SPEAKER_00

No. Like LeBron's gonna make that pass on that last shot, right? Yeah, he's gonna find the guy who's open and it's gonna be the right play. Jordan's taking the shot. Both are great, but in totally different ways, you know.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly. But both of them had to just tap into their own um their own being and like be themselves completely. And I think understanding that you are already great. I I I have I've really struggled with that. I think in track that was one of my biggest downfalls is that not believing I was already great. I think a lot of people will, you know, you hear a lot of things, you know. Oh, like, you know, in track for me, I wasn't like the greatest like distance runner. I wasn't like, you know, oh yeah, I wasn't able to run, you know, 75 miles a week, or I wasn't able to run like an insane 5k, but like you know, I'll smack you in a mile, like I'll smack you in a fit uh 800, right? Like, and like not, you know, I wasn't like always a front runner, right? But like when I got to college, we tried to immediately try to change how I ran, tried to put me, you know, as a front runner rather than a person who sits and kicks and waits. And I'm like, yo, what I was doing was working, and like that was like my joy. And like when you try to change that, I think that's where you find hiccups. And um again, I think I'm in that, I think I'm in that right now where I'm trying to figure out with the band, like, alright, how do I continue to be myself completely and understand like even though I'm not like where I want to be, like that I'm already great. You know what I mean? Like I think I think Yeah, I think people just need to understand they're already great. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

From talking to you about this for a little bit, I I like to try to you know, I put my own spin on on the words of whatever. But my re reaction to your description of greatness and really that pursuit of greatness, which I think you you view as almost more important than the actual achievement of greatness, is like greatness as a purifying force. The it's like Dante's Inferno, right? You go through the fire and you're left at the end with a purified soul. And this idea, this struggle for greatness, this striving for it, of putting yourself through the fire of greatness, of of testing your beliefs against every day's reality. That like what it's not gonna do, it's not gonna turn you into something you're not. It's going to reveal the thing that's within you that you hold dear. You know, the the you that is real you will be all that's left after the fire, but like only through these this incredible endurance of perseverance that is just trying to achieve greatness. Like you're talking 16-hour days, and now you're realizing, like, alright, this is kind of killing me. There's I think that's part of the fun of like trying to achieve your own personal greatness or whatever, is like when you realize like this thing that I thought would work, this simple structure of like maybe if I just work 16 hours a day every day, it's like, actually, no, that seems to be negatively affecting this other thing. Now I have to recalibrate, and that constant recalibration is the purifying thing. Like, you're trying to figure out who you are through this ordeal that you're putting yourself through. Does that sound about correct?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, spot on, for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks, man. I uh I love that uh reading of Dante's Inferno. I don't know if you've read it, it's a great book.

SPEAKER_02

But uh I'm not a big I'm not a big book creator, unfortunately. And no, I I know I made it sound like I was, but like I've I've literally since college, I've maybe read like three books, but um three or four. But I have a real hard time like I have AD I have ADD and like I have a really hard time with like anything that's like non-fiction. Sorry, sorry, that's not that that is fiction or like French D or like so everything I've read has either been like a self-help book or it's been like a biography of some sort. Um I can I can I can get through those.

SPEAKER_00

What I always tell people is like if you're really interested in getting into fiction, which I I think the reason that you should get into fiction, the reason that I'll make my case for anybody to get into it is like it's the best way to get into somebody else's mind. This is the muscle of empathy, right? To empathize with somebody, you kind of have to see the world through their eyes. That's what I've gotten out of fiction. I think the best way to do it is you uh you go through uh contemporary short fiction, you know, short stories. Something's like 15, 20 pages. You can put it on your headphones when you're watching uh or when you were like washing dishes or something like that.

SPEAKER_02

And for me, I'm not very empathetic, so that makes sense why I'm not into it. Okay, man. No, no, no. No, what it is though, what it is though, like I have a hard time understanding the rules of the world. Like, I remember I tried to read like Narnia when I was like in fourth grade. And like I remember like rereading the first chapter of Magician's Nephew, and they're talking about these rings and these pools. One like they're jumping into one and then like it sends them to this world, and then they jump into a different one and sends it to that world, but like there's like weird rules, and like I remember just like trying to think about it, and I was like, I can't picture, I just can't picture it. I have a hard time picturing things, which is really interesting because I am an engineer, and I feel like as an engineer, you have to understand like the broad picture with stuff, but I have to like physically look at it and take it all apart and then put it back together in order to like make it make sense. So books, books are like really tough, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00

But there's a uh a really, really famous tweet, if you can call a f a tweet famous, where this guy goes, There's uh word cells and shape rotators. The world is made out of word cells and shape rotators, word cell being like a play on incel or whatever. And the word cells are these people that have flower language to describe whatever the hell's going on, but the world is made by the shape rotators, the people that can take an apple and slice it in their head, or like they're engineers, they can construct a bridge manually by rotating the shapes. And they can't tell you the elegance of a bridge or something like that. They can't tell you the metaphysical importance of a building, but they did build a building, and they can leave it for the word cells to describe, and like this this divide there of uh this way that you see the world. Some people are shape rotators, some people are word cells. I am very clearly a word cell, I think. It's very obvious uh to anyone that talks, but you know, it it's different ways to see the world, it's different things that you view as important or something like that. I don't think either one of them you need one and the other to balance off each other. When I talk about marriage all the time, I always say it's a unity of opposites. Those unities of opposites are necessary. You need the bridge, and then you also need somebody to describe like why it's important to have a bridge that connects these two places and like what's actually happening here, you know? So that's interesting, yeah. Yeah. So welcome to the the Shape Rotator community, man. I I still suggest if you ever get into it, like short stories are really, really easy once you get into it, and I enjoy them.

SPEAKER_02

I'll start with some ASAP fables or something like that.

SPEAKER_00

I'll read uh there's like this is gonna be one of those fun things where it's like I want to be like, oh dude, there's a whole treasure trove of uh like great, you know, young African American black writers or whatever you want to do that like I wish I could name them. I'll send you the the the stories when I'm looking about. I can never remember anybody's name that wrote them, but like there's one that I'm specifically remembering. It's uh this this kid, roughly your age, black kid, gets invited to this very fancy like party with all these rich white people or something like that, and it turns into basically like a fight club, and it's designed that only one of them is gonna come out of it. But he's writing it in this like this specific way of like, oh well, obviously this is how these things work out, this is what a high society is all about. Everyone knows that we're gonna go through this fight to the death or whatever. And it's obviously like this allegory for like a young black man trying to make it in, you know, the rich polite society or whatever, the violence that is bestowed upon them that they don't really want to do, but it's necessary for these people to like pay attention to them or whatever. It's a really good story, it's stuck with me for years, but uh obviously not enough for me to remember anybody's name, so sorry about that. Maybe I'll plug that back in and try to make myself sound smart, but I'll get into that after Lego Movie 2.

SPEAKER_02

How about that?

SPEAKER_00

Fuck yeah, let's go. Like that's the rotat that's the marriage of shape rotation and word cell, you know? It's kind of like a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01

Maybe when you said that before I thought about it, I was like, oh, I like Lego movie.

SPEAKER_00

See, man, it all comes together.

SPEAKER_01

Release the couple the piece of resistance. Oh my god. Oh, dude, I I need to watch that movie again, man. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my god I'm such a baby, man. I'm so I love stupid jokes like that too. Like, I don't want like a thought funny, thought-out joke. Give me some stupid uh Lego humor here and there. That shit makes me laugh like a baby. But uh when you started making music, uh, you're doing it in college, uh, it sounds like like what what got you really into music? What was uh what was it that you were listening to that you're like, man, I want to try to do that myself?

SPEAKER_02

Um I actually started a lot earlier than that. I got my first microphone when I was 13. Um But I didn't know how to write a song, I didn't know how to like record really. I was like, I remember just like trying to record my amp, and I'm just like, why doesn't it sound like Reliant K? Or like why doesn't it sound like Switchfoot? I was just like, this doesn't make sense. I have a microphone, I have and I was like, I guess I need a big studio. You know, I remember it's funny, like I remember like looking in the mirror, and I was like, I was so I was like, I was trying so hard, and I was like, I don't know how to write a song, but I have to do it, and I'm so scared, da-da-da. And I remember looking in the mirror. I'm like 14, I'm so dramatic. I I'm like looking in the mirror. I love it, man. I love it. I'm like, if you want to be a legend, you gotta write your own music. You gotta just do it. And like, yeah, that's when I started. That's when I like kind of started like trying to record. I didn't so what I did, I just started rapping. My high I remember uh my cross-country team, we would just like freestyle rap in the back of the bus just for fun or whatever. Oh, dude.

SPEAKER_00

One of my friends is like that was a huge sports. Every fucking bus I was ever on in uh in high school, somebody was rapping in the back. I don't know why that was. It was every single time, you know?

SPEAKER_02

It was the best, man. Uh but yeah, one of my buddies, Alec, shout out Alec Merrill. Uh he was like, he's dude, he's like, you're kind of good at this, man. You should you should like try to put out a mixtape. And then uh the spring awards came around, and uh this is like the end of school, it's my senior year. I gave like this like heartfelt speech. I was just like, thank you guys so much for like you know, high-fiving me in the hallways, like it means so much. I know I don't talk much, but like that really means a lot to me, da-da-da. And I just want to leave you with this mixtape jumping Thursday, and the whole auditory is just like they thought I was joking, dude. They thought I was joking, but I had everyone write like soundcloud.com slash Tijani uh on every like whiteboard in the school. And so Oh dude, you already know how to market that shit. It was honestly looking back, that's like probably one of the coolest things I've done. But I was like, I was looking embarrassed, but I was like, this is cool, but it was fun, it was funny, it was cool.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I love that, man. I love the confidence right off the gate. It's like, yeah, go on the go on the whiteboard right on the It was just a joke.

SPEAKER_02

Like, I I treated it like a joke. Like I was like serious, but like I don't know. At that time, SoundCloud was just like a different world. And like uh yeah, I don't know. I was just having fun and like just trying to learn how to record. And I remember that summer, I was like, I thought my buddy Will, again, I'm so dramatic. I'm just like, dude, Chance the rapper did it with his friends. We're gonna figure this out, man. I'm gonna figure this out. And you know, I just kept getting better, and I just kept uh I started rapping because I didn't, I didn't I broke it down literally like an engineer. I was just like, what is a song? What are the parts that I need to work on? And I was like, okay. Parts of a song, chords, melody, lyrics. That's like b drums and yeah, you know, guitars, whatever. I'm like, okay, well, I don't know how to produce or make beats, so let me just grab beats off of YouTube. And I was like, trying to sing songs and make songs that way. Was like, I was like, I don't know how to like make songs uh with uh I don't know how to sing melodies. So I was like, let me just take away the melody and just sorry, I don't know how to write lyrics, so let me just rap. So I just started rapping. So I was like, okay, cool, I got good at that. I was like, alright, let me incorporate some of my own guitars. Okay, cool. Let me put some melodies on my vocals. Alright, cool, let's learn how to write a hook. What is a hook? How long is it? How many words is it? What's like it's very logical. Why do I like yeah? I literally broke it down like an engineer, and like it's so funny because like if you listen to my music, it's pretty structured. There's not like a lot of like crazy like transitions or like dropouts here and there, da-da-da. But like if you listen to someone like you know Brakins, the artist Brakens is his his writing is very, very, very fluid, his melodies are all over the place, and they kind of just fall into this weird like place. Most of the time the lyrics don't even rhyme, but sometimes somehow it's still catchy.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I'm the complete opposite. I'm the complete opposite. Like you can write down every lyric, and you could be like, alright, this is where he was like went into internal rhyme here, and then he brought this back here, and then was talking about this topic and brought this topic down here. Like, like you can literally see how my brain works if you break down all my brains.

SPEAKER_00

You turned it into shapes, man. You turn it into shapes. Wow, that's crazy. So this gets back, this gets back to like the LeBron versus MJ thing, right? There's some guy that's out there, and it's just, you know, I love uh Jay Mask is of Dinosaur Jr., one of my favorite uh guitar players, but he described it once as like fishing. He just sits with a guitar and messes around until he finds something, and then he works on that, and that becomes a song. But it's very much just like I'm gonna look some people are an antenna and they sit around and they wait for something to reverberate inside their brain, and then they they produce that in music, you know? And it's just this sort of like they caught they catch lightning in the bottle, but it's almost like they're reaching into something that's already there and pulling it down. Some people are constructing it. If do you know who uh do you know the band Weezer?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Do you know uh Rivers Como? Do you know his whole like he's like he's you but like the final boss of that? Like he literally has everything written down in like no cards, he has an entire system that some people think is wildly insane. But it's like to me, I'm like, well, if you're a guy that like sees shapes, you know, if you're a shape rotator, if your brain works the way that Rivers does, this totally makes sense and it produces. Produces good music. Who can tell anybody that this isn't the right way to do it? Like who if it if the results produce music that resonates with other people, who the fuck can sit there and tell you what is or isn't you know that's the point of art, right?

SPEAKER_02

That's so interesting, man. That's so interesting. Like, and like you gotta be you. Like, that's something I learned a couple years ago. Like when I first put out like a project called On Prozac, I remember thinking like, I'm like, man, like it takes me. I remember thinking like judging myself for being like, oh, it takes me so long to write songs, and I only have like these simple chords, and uh but I was just like or like you know, some people are very good storytellers in their music. I'm not really like that way, you know. I'm a little I have like clever clever lines that couple together. It's not like a whole storyline. I was just I uh I just played a show with Scatterbrain and Grip is their um their frontman, and Grip was telling me about their projects uh with Scatterbrain and like how it tells this long story of like uh of this person about dealing with anxiety and like dude and the way Grip's brain, like the way he described it, I'm like, wow, that is so deep, and like on the opposite spectrum of where I'm at. And um, and I was just like, oh, you just have to like understand this is your way, and you have to just do it that way. And keep refining and learn how to keep refining it.

SPEAKER_00

So that's the beauty of music and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02

Like my uh uh my sometimes co-host my guitarist is is that way too. He's he's very opposite, but yeah, yeah, we work really well together.

SPEAKER_00

It's just you know, it's what works. I my guitar or my sometimes co-host of this podcast, this uh woman named Isabel, uh, and she plays in this band called Baby Tooth, and it's very lyrically driven. Like it almost feels like they have the lyrics first, and then they tell a story, and then the music is to like punctuate that, right?

SPEAKER_01

I'd never do that. That's wild to me.

SPEAKER_00

I know. On the other end of that spectrum, my wife, uh, when she would write her own music under Yellow Room, it was so music first, like it was always about can I get the expression with the guitars that literally as we were driving to gigs, she was writing the lyrics down because she had never actually finalized them. She just sang things that kind of felt good, and she'd write them down on the way to the gig, and it'll be like she'd have to keep the piece of paper where she could see it so she knew what the actual words were. But it's the exact opposite, and both of them produced songs that I like emotionally resonate to, you know, that I put on and I'm walking around. And sometimes it's just a phrase, and sometimes it's the way the guitar sounds, but like neither one of them is right or wrong. It's just, you know, it's yin and yang, man. Everything is this unity opposites, right? Wow.

SPEAKER_02

That's so interesting, man. So for you, it's like honestly, that's my favorite part about like learning about other people's processes and how they write music and stuff. That's so interesting.

SPEAKER_00

It's liberation, man. You you listen to it and you're like, oh, I can just do anything. I can spend 15 minutes on a song and crank something out and it might be good. I can spend six weeks on a song and it might be good. And I think my favorite thing when I talk to people that have been doing it for a while, right, is a lot of times they figure out a process that starts to work for them, and then for some reason the process stops working because the process of figuring out the process was actually what was making the interesting music. It wasn't the finalized process. And so it's like now you gotta throw you gotta throw a wrench in your own process, give yourself something to work around just to get the actual genuine nature of the process of figuring out the process so you can make something that feels authentic, you know.

SPEAKER_02

For me, that thing is like limitations and exploration. It's like, okay, I've been I've been going like maximalist with all these microphones and different drums and different guitars and pedals and stuff like that. And then I'm like, oh, I'm stuck, I don't know where to go. And so I'll approach it again with like more limits. I'm like, okay, cool. One guitar or like two guitars, drums, vocal, that's it. And then I'm like, oh, that gives me that limit, like allows me to uh just be more creative and solve the problem with with in a different way. And then like once those limits are too much, I'm like, okay, let me explore something. Then I'm like, alright, let me introduce a female vocal, let me introduce a new guitar pedal, let me introduce uh I don't know, some some something that I don't usually do, or let me rip a drum sample or something like that, you know. And like it I constantly bounce between those two things. So yeah, that's that's exactly what I'm saying. I love that for me.

SPEAKER_00

The way I always describe those is like the the creative process of like trying to find something new. Um there's this phrase that I'm stealing from uh uh Deng Xiaoping of the Communist Party of China. He said when they were doing their reform and opening up thing, he said, let a thousand flowers bloom, right? So the idea was like just let a bunch of businesses start, the ones that bloom, those are the ones that'll continue. We're not gonna nitpick all of it. The other end of that is this idea of art through limitation, right? This idea that like it's actually trying to work around limits that force a type of creativity. Both of these things are true, and they both produce, you know. And you look at some people, uh something works better one way or the other. Star Wars with George Lucas. The first couple Star Wars movies, when he's limited by his budget, when he's limited by what actually can be built in a creative design, he told these very direct stories. Like the story made a lot more sense than when he was given free reign in the prequels. Now all of a sudden the stories are a little bit wilder, but they did create this huge, beautiful world that people fucking love. People love both the Star Wars original trilogy and the prequels. One is art through limitation, one is letting a thousand flowers bloom. There really is no wrong answer in this thing. It really just comes down to like how much work are you gonna put in to keep trying until you get to the thing that you actually that does actually work, you know? It's not a process, it's a it's really more about motivation, you know.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's that's that's kind of where I'm at right now. I think like my whole goal for a long time was like get good at music. And like now that I've proven that to myself, I'm like, okay, well, how can I get good at you know, making a great show? Or how do I get good in like connecting with fans? Like, because that's something that's like really, really like I haven't really like focused on at all. Because I've always just been like make good music, make good music, and then like, you know, and people have, you know, people have responded well, and but like at the same time it's like I have really high expectations for myself, and like I I I want people to be like, you know, how I was, you know, a a super fan of like chance or like a super fan of of Rockhampton, you know, and I haven't quite figured out how to do that part, so I that's I think that's the next I think this next season is what that what is what that's gonna look like.

SPEAKER_00

Um that's cool.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, I mean I I I yeah I'm such an athlete, man.

SPEAKER_00

Dude, I I love the athlete mentality in music, you know. I I've talked to a couple people that played some sports back in the day, and you can see how it shapes how they approach music. I think it's kind of cool, you know. And I like that there's also people who never played a sport in their entire fucking life, and they still do this, and they still come to like very similar conclusions. It's more of a framing device than it is like a metric on whether or not it's gonna work, you know.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. Um so yeah, that's that I think that's that's my next my next step. Um like I said, I haven't had like the zest from like making new music that much. It's so I'm like, okay, where else can I find that? Um and also just in life in general, like just trying to, you know. Just trying to explore different identities. You know, I got back into running, I um I went on a date recently for the first time in like a year. Like, dude, I think it's not like oh yeah, dude. It's so unlike me, so unlike me.

SPEAKER_00

Dude, I can't. I all I do is whenever I hear anybody talk about dating, I've been out of the game for 10 years. I haven't got on a date with a new person in 10 years, and it's like whenever I hear people do it, I'm like, oh my god, people are still doing that? That sounds awful. I can't believe you guys have to do that still.

SPEAKER_02

It's the thing is about Charlotte, like, man, I've been here so long, and then also like not to be like, oh I'm like locally famous, but like I've been here so long, and so many people have been to my shows and my name's around town enough where it's like, oh, like you know like everyone I know. You know, not every not every interaction's great, you know. So it's like, alright, whatever. But um it's uh I don't know, man. I then again that part sometimes doesn't excite me either, but like at least I'm at least I think you know, one thing I learned from uh you know just watching the greats, you know, Jalen Brunson dropping 45 in the game five.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my god. That was one thing I what a fucking run for the Knicks. God damn it, dude.

SPEAKER_02

I was such I was a casual basketball fan. I wish I w I'm being from North Carolina, I should have been a Curry fan. Like I should have watched this movie. Oh, that would have been an idiot. I'm such an idiot for not.

SPEAKER_00

You whiffed because it's not gonna happen again. It's just not gonna happen again.

SPEAKER_02

I was such I was so distant from it. I was like, oh, that's cool, you know, but like and I was aware of him, but I like he literally grew up like 45 minutes away from me. I'm like, I could have been anyways.

SPEAKER_00

Uh dude, the the old head of me is like whenever he would take those half-court shots and stuff like that, like I got yelled at for taking in back in my day. If you took a three-pointer on a fast break and you missed it, you were on the bench probably for the rest of the game. Like you were not allowed to do dude. That was wildly unacceptable behaviors. Like, you're in a fast break, you get in a layup. What are you doing? You know, you gotta you gotta work towards the basket. Everything was about getting closer to the basket. So, like, when I watched Steph Curry versus the 2016 finals against the Cavaliers, it was literally like the Cavaliers were the basketball I knew versus the basketball of the future fighting it out. And it was it's still the best series I've ever watched. Although, you know, I don't know. This whole playoffs was wild, it was really, really fun. I'm excited to see the Blazers come back and be good next year because Damian Lillard is going to come back at a hundred percent as healthy as he was before the torn Achilles. He's gonna tear it up. Uh we're we're fucked dude. We're fucked. The players are fine. But we're fucked, dude.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so like I've been I've been tapping into that, but like, dude, man, oh I'm so mad I didn't watch Steph's career, but I used to be. Oh yeah, just like oh wait, wait, what was I talking about?

SPEAKER_00

Uh you're talking about Dayton.

SPEAKER_02

No, I was I was I mentioned something about Bronson. Oh yeah, just watching the greats. I think one thing that's like super important that I I typically neglect, I tend to isolate more. And like all of the greats had had great social lives, whether they had one person or a great relationship with their coach or their teammates or you know, a significant other or whatever, and like I feel like that's been like a piece I've neglected for a while now. I have really good fri I have really, really good friends, they're the best, honestly, but I don't see them every day, we don't talk every day. Um and so I've been trying to just like prioritize prioritize that a lot more because yeah, this this year, dude. Literally this year I was like recording in hotel rooms and like that's crazy, man. Uh uh editing videos in hotel hotel rooms like to like 12 and then I had to get up at like 6 a.m. and like it was crazy. It was honestly insane. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um for you, man. I feel like the the the real challenge that you're getting your head around is like how do you not do anything? How do you just be you for a little bit?

SPEAKER_02

And you know, there's this uh there's a because because management and labels are always forcing down your throat, hey, you need to post more, hey, you need to do this more. I'm just like, bro, like I am tired. I am tired, bro. What what more do you want from me? What Travis Barker DM me dude?

SPEAKER_00

They're gonna want everything from you, man. They're gonna want everything from me.

SPEAKER_02

And I do I do feel a little bit of shame because I feel like I dropped the ball a little bit last year, but like, I don't know, man.

SPEAKER_00

Who's to say, man? Who's to say? Here's the thing, too. Yeah, who gives a shit if you did? Like you're gonna fuck you're not gonna do everything right all the time. Maybe you dropped the ball a little bit last year. Who gives a shit? Now what? Now what are you gonna do? That's how I always think about with like that. It's like, now are you gonna do? Are you gonna like give yourself even more to this label entity or whatever to the industry that is gonna ask for everything from you? Or are you gonna, you know, or are you gonna try to achieve greatness? Greatness is not they're not gonna tell you how to achieve greatness, right? They don't know what it is. They know how to make money off of if you get great. They don't know how to they don't know what greatness is, though. So it's like you're gonna have to fight that battle. It doesn't mean you tell them to fuck off and and do whatever the fuck you want on your own. Like it's that balance, you know? You gotta figure out this is this entity that can help me, can hurt me. I gotta go figure out what that is, you know. It's another part of that process.

SPEAKER_02

That's honestly that's such a tough part. Like I grew up with like I didn't grow up with a lot of money. My parents didn't have a lot. Like, it took me like a year and a half to save up for my own electric guitar when I was like 11. Uh 11. Yeah, literally, literally, I would ask my parents.

SPEAKER_00

Financial responsibility. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02

And so my relationship to money is very different. And it's like if I have a roof over my head, if I have food, if I have clothes and water, and I'm then I'm fine. I don't need any more. So like having money feels weird. Like people pay honestly, people like paying for merch feels weird. I've had to change my relationship to that. Um, but you know, at the same time, it's just like alright. There is a way to do this, and uh we're gonna figure it out, you know. Um or at least we're gonna try, you know. I you know, I have some offers and you know some stuff, and I I I don't know. I one probably don't have enough guidance. Two I don't know. Yeah, there's just gaps in knowledge, you know. So um I'm trying my best, you know, still got some still got some some some emails to hit back.

SPEAKER_00

But I mean the grind never ends, man. The grind never ends. Yeah, you know, uh on that merch thing, like uh in terms of framing stuff, right? Because it it is weird to ask somebody to pay $30 for a t-shirt or something like that. But you gotta remember, like, if these people are coming to your show, if they're fans of you, they're fans of your music and stuff like that, they want to say that to you in a specific way. They want to do some sort of action.

SPEAKER_02

It's like And you want it you want a piece of it. I think about I think about Brock Hampton, or I think about you know, chance, and I remember just like feeling pride that I had this like this piece of merch or this t-shirt or like this vinyl. Like I I that's a part of my identity. Someone disses Brock Hampton, I feel like, oh, are you dissing Brock Hampton? Like that's what I got. Yeah, it's weird to shift that perspective to like myself where it's like, oh, if someone disses Tijani, like then I they feel weird, or like if someone you know I'm saying, like I try to put myself in other people's shoes.

SPEAKER_00

So that's that thing where it's like when you were uh a fan of these other guys, right? You kind of feel like in your brain, it logically makes sense that the amount that you love these other artists, when you become one of them, you're gonna get a reciprocal amount of love in return. But that's the nature of the beast. That can't happen. The amount of love that you poured into them, that's not gonna come back once you are in their position. That's just something you're gonna have to deal with. But it's like it it you do still have to create that opportunity for some other kid to buy your fucking t-shirt to think that you're the goddamn man so that they put the effort in to be there, to then have to tackle the exact same issue that you are tackling right now. Yeah, it's this it's a uh it's a waterfall, it's a stream, it's not uh ping pong, it doesn't go back and forth, it just keeps going forward, and you're part of a lot much, much larger process, but like that doesn't mean it doesn't feel kind of fucking weird at the time at the time that it's happening. It's just it is what it is, you know?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. It's so wild. Um and yeah, I really thank you for that reminder, man. I I I try to think about that all the time, you know. I have it like painted on my wall, like for black kids who love guitar, you know. Like I think Yeah, dude. Again, there's you can you can win and you can win the win the right way and you can do it your way. Um you just have to, you know, keep putting in the work and understand like uh there's steps to the process, and you just have to figure out the steps and do the steps. That's all it is, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Uh yeah, yeah, and like uh like you're saying, man, it's just you got uh you got a compass on you right now that's trying to point towards greatness, right? This is the thing that you're trying to achieve. It's gonna be uh a process of revelation, you know. As you take steps forward, that compass is gonna keep you going in a direction, but you're gonna figure out stuff about yourself. But I like I like the fact that your head on it is like, yeah, that's the goal. The goal is for me to try to achieve greatness, not to achieve greatness, but to figure out who the fuck Tejani is, you know, what you're gonna be in this life. This is your life. You gotta figure out who that guy is. Yeah, and you know, I think it's a good mindset, and I think so far it has produced some really cool music. Uh thank you. We barely talked about the music, but dude, I'm telling you right now, on most of these podcasts, we never talk about the music. It's always just you. I don't personally, from my own like thing, is this guy that is now somebody who talks about music on the internet. Uh I don't want to tell some kid that is listening to your music what to think about the song. I want them to know you and to talk about you and see why you're cool. And then their song, the relationship they have with any of your songs, that's between them and the song. I why the fuck would I pervert that? I don't know shit, man. I don't know who this kid is. I don't even know that I don't I haven't listened to your music enough to even tell you about your own music, man. I I like it. I I've been playing it, I'm gonna make some reels about it because you know you seem like a cool guy, and obviously I gotta promote my own fucking podcast, so I'll make some reels for that shit. But uh, you know, the idea that like I'm gonna tell some kid that like this is the best song on the album when they think this other thing's the best song in the album. Yeah. To me, that's that that is nonsense. It doesn't make it doesn't mean anything what I say. I'm not I'm not anybody, man.

SPEAKER_02

That's a really interesting point, too. Like it's funny when people DM me, like sometimes they're like, oh, satirical is the best song, or like delusional is the best song, or real life is the best song, or like everyone's like idea of or better days, like everyone's idea of like what the best song is on the project is so interesting.

SPEAKER_00

And I like it probably just depends on their background and what they're feeling at the moment, but um you know what's funny is give them a couple months, they might think it's a different song because they're a different person. Every time you listen to a song, it's different because you're a different person every time you listen to it, man. It's like I the idea that it never really made sense to me that people would give like a number rating to a song because I've never listened to a song and been like that's a six. No, when I listen to a song, I'll think about like going to McDonald's as a kid and like getting lost in the play play play place like ball pit or something like that. And I'll think about that as like how do I categorize that as good, better, best, seven, eight, five? It's like, no, it's just this is a weird memory. I'm alive. This song's making me think about that for whatever fucking reason. Yeah, that's what's important, you know. It's not the it's not the competition of it all. This is art, man. It's your life, you know. Yeah, so uh anyway, man. Uh this is an hour. I like to keep it roughly at an hour uh because I feel like that's a good amount of time to listen to two people talk. Uh give us some plugs, man. Where can people follow you? What shows do you got coming up? Uh what are some other artists that you like? Plug whatever the fuck you want to plug. Uh and you know, I'll thanks again, man. This has been really fun. And thank you. I always like getting to meet people on a podcast because it's very weird. Like, if you're listening to this right now, we've never talked before this. This is our only conversation. I feel like I got a good sense of who you are. Um, I don't want to run with you because running is the worst.

SPEAKER_02

But uh, oh I'm I'm slow now. Um I don't know. I have I honestly honestly I don't run with or watch anymore because I spent so much time like you know calculating miles and pace and doing like I literally just go out and jog, and then I just like if I feel if my body feels like going farther, then I just go farther, and if I feel like going less, then I go less. Like it's it's such a it's a lot more it's it's yeah, I I I had the same conversation with someone earlier, and I was like, it feels like picking up the guitar on the porch and watching the sunset versus like alright, I'm gonna sit down and practice my scales and like we gotta gig next week or something like that. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

I think the biggest thing for me is like it's harder now for me to get all geared up than I'm gonna go work out and get in shape, because it's like I was in shape once, I'm never getting back there, and it's kind of disappointing all the time. But I also tore my Achilles, so that's my big excuse for like I don't need to do this anymore. You know, I'm just gonna practice some jump shots.

SPEAKER_02

I feel yeah, I feel you, I feel you, man. I used to be. But yeah, yeah. Plug away, man, plug away. Um, yeah, it's my handle as of right now is at middle name TJ, all in word, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, uh Tijani, T E Apostrophe, J A N I on you know, anywhere you listen to music. Um Bandcamp SoundCloud if you want the deep cuts. Uh oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And then I've got to hear is the SoundCloud album uh that you released in high school, is that still available?

SPEAKER_02

Oh no, it's private. It was terrible. It was so bad. It was so bad. I need it so bad. It's crazy. You might gotta s you might have to send it to me. That was the first time I dude, I went viral. Off that first uh off that first thing. Which is crazy because it was like 2015 viral is very different from like 2025.

SPEAKER_00

It's a whole different world, man.

SPEAKER_02

Like it someone posted, like, I'm I'm from this small town called Waxaw, and or I'm not from there, but I I grew up there um in high school and uh middle school. And uh yeah, there was this there was this uh oh what was it called? There was this app called Yik Yak. I don't know if you remember Yik Yak.

SPEAKER_00

Dude, I remember that's a deep cut.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it was like this anonymous, like uh like locally driven like social media thing. I I don't remember I don't really remember it, but uh yeah, it was basically you could like type anonymous stuff like and you could set it to like a mile radius and someone was like yo someone made a song about Waxaw and like put it like in the Charlotte one. And like I guess some like I guess some popular kid at like the school called Cuthpresson uh like put it on their on their uh put it on their um whatchamacallit on Twitter or whatever and it went crazy on Twitter and then like it got like it got I I think it got like 10,000 plays or something like 15,000 plays or something like that. And it was just like at that time, like Wasaw, it was only like a city of like 4,000 people. So it's like shout out Waxaw, you know, I got a love pay relationship with it, but yo, shout out Wasaw. Hell yeah, man. At middle name TJ, Tijani, uh uh what else? Upcoming shows. We're playing Carolina Bloomfest in Charlotte, North Carolina. We play on Friday. Uh I think our set's gonna be somewhere around 3 p.m. Um after that we are shutting it down to record. Um but yeah, if any if any young artist, producer, engineer, whatever wants to hit me up, let me know. Just DM me. I try to get back to all my DMs. Sometimes I forget, but you know, just hit me back again. Usually I'm I'm straight up just forgetful and my attention is everywhere. I also hate being on the internet, but like, you know, I try to do that.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, dude, yeah. But it's the nature of the beast, right? You gotta do it. You gotta do it.

SPEAKER_02

So dude, thank you very much. Oh yeah, and oh please, please, please, please, please listen to Shirtless. Please listen to Life of the Party. Um, we got Shirtless 2 coming up and Shirtless 3 coming up later in the year, so please listen to those. Share with homies. I worked super hard on it. I recorded all the guitars and drums and all that stuff and mixed and master myself. So yeah, I'm very proud of it. It's a super fun song. So if you love guitar stuff and indie rock stuff, um support a black homie, pull up.

SPEAKER_00

Come on, man. I know, I know my audience, man. I've seen the metrics. You guys are a white, white crowd, so uh time to expand the expand the reach a little bit out here, you know? There you go, there you go. But yeah, man, uh yeah, uh just real quick on that. Like, if you listen to any of the stuff that I do, I like to get these podcasts with like smaller artists and stuff like that. Like, I'm happy to talk about all the bands that, you know, I've talked about the Smashing Pumpkins and Pavement a million times. Uh if you support any of the stuff that I do, go listen to the small artists, go bump some of their songs, show them to your friends, follow their accounts and stuff like that. You have no idea how much more important it is to an artist that's trying to get off the ground now to make music for the next couple of years. Just even a couple of plays and uh showing it to a couple people, just getting it out there. That stuff matters so much more than like playing the same music that's been on the air and on the radio for 25 years. Uh so yeah, go support Tejani, man. This guy's cool. I like this podcast. I had a lot of fun. If you're ever in Portland, Oregon, man, hit me up. We'll set you up with a house show or something like that. Those are the fun ones to play out here.

SPEAKER_03

Ooh, that was a good one. It's kinda fun.

SPEAKER_00

It's kind of pretty far away from fucking everybody, but uh, you know, it's fun out here, man. Yeah, dude, let me know. Let me know. If you're ever in town, we can put you up, uh, we can try to get you shows, probably some DIY house shows and stuff like that. Seattle. We know people all up and down the West Coast, so uh we'll be able to do that. Thank you so much, Kyle.