Lemme Ask You This
From the minds of Talib Kweli and Tef Poe comes Lemme Ask You This, a podcast that lives at the intersection of art and activism.
Lemme Ask You This
Episode 17 - Industry Standard
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Episode 17 of Lemme Ask You This with Talib Kweli and Tef Poe starts with Tef Poe breaking down his Sunday Dinner event concept. Talib and Tef then talk about how the concert business is booming and thank people for subscribing to the show. Talib talks about the importance of owning your masters and Tef explains why this current era of the music business feels alien to him. Talib and Tef talk about whether or not artists are required to be professionals. Talib talks about how Live Nation is a monopoly and Tef talks about how 360 deals are a part of the current reality. Tef talks about working with cigarette brands and Talib talks about working with liquor companies. Tef asks Talib about his journey to independence and Talib talks about working with Duck Down. Talib talks about being inspired by El-P and how he is seen as a one hit wonder by some. Talib breaks down how Taylor Swift fans took Live Nation to court and asks what can be learned from this. Talib talks about the essay he wrote about W. Kamau Bell and the racism he faces online. Talib talks about how the majority of white voters voted for Trump and the pattern recognitions of racists. Tef talks about how racists invade online comment sections and the global impact of Black Star. Talib asks Tef to name is favorite Michael Jackson songs and this leads to a discussion about how great Michael Jackson is. Talib and Tef discuss their favorite movies and show love to Mistah Fab.
Shot and Edited By Chino Chase. Additional Filming By Aaron Ross Media Co.
Tik Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@lemmeaskyouthispodcast
Threads https://www.threads.com/@lemmeaskyouthispod
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lemmeaskyouthispod/
Alright, so Tef, you've been talking about this Sunday dinner series for quite some time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Break that down. Initially, I was being a stickler about it being specifically on Sunday. You know what I'm saying? But then when I started trying to put things together, I was like, well, in order to do this, every one of them can't be on a Sunday. Because people like myself, I'm moving around with folks like you on weekends and stuff. I'm just not in the same position to be in the same location every Sunday. But uh we bring in the energy and the aesthetic of what a Sunday dinner vibe and the feeling and the purpose is on when when we do these events overall, you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01So you work with another organization with these events, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, live free. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um tell me more about them.
SPEAKER_00Faith-based organization that has done a lot of gun prevention, gun violence prevention. Um a good guy named Pastor Mike is the reason I'm associated with him, met him in Ferguson. Um and uh we've had we had a long-standing relationship, so I just, you know, I've never worked directly with him. And he called me to get down with him on putting this together, so that's how I come to the fold.
SPEAKER_01So because it's a faith-based organization, that's also why it's important to include the Sunday dinner aspect of it. Yeah, right? Yeah. I get that. So as a burgeoning wannabe DJ, I've tried to do like monthly events.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, and it's difficult for me because my bread and butter is still torn and I gotta put the MC shit first. So it's very difficult for me to commit to a monthly event. Yeah. Um, so I did an event in Austin for a couple of years called Last Tuesdays. I was able to commit to Last Tuesdays. What if the Sunday dinner, how often y'all doing them?
SPEAKER_00Well, ideally, we don't know yet. You know, maybe, maybe periodically, maybe once a month, you know. Right now we're building it as we fly it. Okay, we're flying as we build it. So you're still in the incubation stage.
SPEAKER_01So I could get in on the ground floor. Oh, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Um, yeah, man. Sunday dinner with the family, that's something Rockefeller used to do.
SPEAKER_00If you listen to old NCAA. They did do that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, stuff like that is important, man, because it puts you in the space with people that you may not normally be in space with.
SPEAKER_01And now From the aunties to the YNs and everybody in the space together.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And we got these phones now, you know, and they can't, and you know, so most of the time, do you really call your friends or do you just look at their social media and say, oh, such and such got this going on, they're cool, you know what I'm saying? I gotta holler at them, you know what I mean? And uh we we're just losing so much connectivity. You know, I I think that's sad, man. You know, but there's ways around it. And even folks coming to concerts, um, I suggest people do that. Go start going back to small room shows. And I know some for me, the thrill of going back to rap shows now is something that I'm really enjoying. Going to check out bands that I've never uh checked out before. Uh before I came out here, I saw Primo Rice. You heard the Primo Rice? Dope rap that's down with Larry June. Um he just did a 420 show at the crib. Uh they had hella dope MCs on that show. Uh this cat named Slow Spread Love from St. Louis is really blowing up. Got this super dope band. Uh, there's this other cat, uh MTM Lil Derek. Young dudes, but super MCs, you know what I'm saying? But uh yeah, so Primo came out there, and those were some of the openers. It's a dope ass show. Super dope show. His music kind of more on some pimp shit. You know what I'm saying? Like some vibe shit, some ladies' man shit, but it's pretty dope. I forgot to say that this is, let me ask you this.
SPEAKER_01I am Talib Kwali. I'm Tef Poe, man. He just caught us right in the middle of the conversation. That's how we get down. You know what I'm saying? Thank you to all the subscribers and the people who have been supporting the show. Um, especially the people who support it, whether we have guests or not, you come here for the conversation between me and Tef Poe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, from the ground up.
SPEAKER_01And that's like the foundation of the podcast. So we definitely appreciate y'all. Salute to y'all. Word is bond.
SPEAKER_00I want to thank all the people helping us build it from the ground up, too, because we are starting to see more and more traction on this weekly, if not daily, for real. And, you know, people are coming up to me in the streets saying, yo, I'm seeing, I'm seeing the clips everywhere, man. It's going down, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, that's really a testament to us just grinding it out, man. Like this came out of nowhere, you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01One thing you said about people going to shows more, um, shout out to Cardi B. She just finished a run of shows that was legendary in 35 cities. They said she made like 70 million on the tour. And um, I was seeing something online about how, even though the economy is getting worse and worse, people have less and less disposable income to spend on things. People are still spending money on concert. Like the concert business is booming and thriving. And um it's because the artists, people still need that art in their life. You know what I'm saying? People still need that release. And so it's very important what we do as artists, man. And I think we need to value what we do more because we have given up a lot of our control when it comes to the art, whether it comes to touring or streaming. Um and we need to, you know, we need to value ourselves more. That's that's that's something that I'm I'm seeing the older I get, the more important it is. And you would think that I would know that from early in my career. Um, but you know it in the abstract. But when you're really doing this, is it becomes real.
SPEAKER_00So the older you get, do you think the the conversation around owning your masters is overrated or underrated?
SPEAKER_01Well, first of all, let's unpack that term, masters. That's a weighted term. Facts only. Why is it even called? Because you're using the word master. Right. And the reels back in the days when they used to use the the reels back in the days, was they called slave reels. That's what they called them. You know what I'm saying? So even in the rhetoric of these standard agreements with these record companies, um, first of all, when you say standard, industry standard, that's a slave contract. It's not because it's the right thing to do, it's because what people have gotten used to. And um, you know, the idea of music being something we talked about this, that people sell sound. You you brought up the alchemist, made the point about selling sound itself is unnatural. The idea that a musician is like a famous rock starter becomes some famous, high elite member of society is a fairly new concept in the world. Most musicians have been poor, broke paupers, you know, poets and grios and people spread in the, you know, that's why the the the music is always speaking in the language of the people. Um, and so this era we're in, if you're a pure artist, it feels alien to you.
SPEAKER_00What do you mean by feels alien?
SPEAKER_01Um, this is this is why somebody like uh Ayasimbe or J Electronica or uh you know Rest in Peace to D'Angelo or Sha Day, why they don't deal with the music business, why MF Doom would wear a mask.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um why Lauren Hill at the height of her fame would walk away from the industry and just be like strip everything down and just it's just me and my guitar. Why Dave Chappelle, at the height of his success, would go to Africa. You know, if you're sane, you have a sane reaction to a crazy society and a crazy business. And these people are truly, truly sane. You know what I'm saying? Like, and the business is crazy. The business calls them crazy.
SPEAKER_00That's deep. I think um I've seen the music industry move to a space where they want a more controllable artist, a more predictable artist. Um I kind of look at it like they want somebody they know that will be willing to come to work, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, that's the conversation that I jump into a lot around professionalism. Like, I'm a professional artist. I pride myself on my professionalism. I try to show up on time. I try to give the fans an experience that they have paid the money to the promoter for, and I say, or to the venue for, and I say they pay the money to the venue, because more times than not, as a consumer, as a fan, you're paying money to the venue. Not to me. You don't know what arrangement I have with the with the venue. That's deep. You know what I'm saying? But people get it confused. Um, people see these high ticket prices and sometimes blame the artist. They blame us more than they blame the athletes. You don't go to a basketball game and see the high ticket prices. You'd be like, it's it's the center's fault.
SPEAKER_00You know what I'm saying? But they do that. Hey, that's a great point. I ain't never heard nobody uh correlate the two.
SPEAKER_01They do that with us. Um it's like I had I I'm trying to be careful with my words because um I do business with Live Nation. Uh I once had a situation with Live Nation where they actually shut me out of the business. And when people say that they are a monopoly, because they just lost that lawsuit. They had people sue them from every almost every state, 40 states sued them, and the and the federal, the Justice Department sued them. Um, and they were found liable for having a monopoly because they bought Ticketmaster. Um, there go that word master again. You know what I'm saying? Um I was in a situation where I was part of a package uh that got canceled. And it wasn't my fault that the package got canceled, but being that I was part of the package unbeknownst to me, Live Nation started making sure that I couldn't perform at venues that did business with Live Nation. And so I was my show money started getting lower, people started saying no. I was on a tour with a currency, shout out to currency, and that tour fell apart, wasn't because of currency, but because of outside, you know what I'm saying? And it was, and I found out, like I switched managements at the time. And when I got with a new manager who was uh very powerful, and he was somebody who worked within the touring business, and he was able to get me some meetings with some people. And I found out, not like honestly, but I had to go dig and do my research that I'm being blocked from doing these shows because Live Nation, in their view, I owed them money because I was part of this. And so I worked out a deal with them and I ended up paying them some bread back. I don't, I didn't feel like I owed them that money, but it was like either I pay them or I don't get to perform in many, many venues. So when I seen this antitrust lawsuit go up, I was like, yup, we gotta break that monopoly the fuck up. You know what I'm saying? Because then Lob Nation, they own Ticketmaster, they be owning the venues, they they had they manage the artists. I just found out today I didn't even know it. They have a influencer management company. Lob Nation manages influencers. So not only are they in the venue, they are working with the artist, they're working with the promoter, they own Ticketmaster where you buy the tickets, they also own the motherfuckers on Instagram and TikTok that's telling you who the hot artist is.
SPEAKER_00Man, I'm also seeing stuff like they're establishing fake record stores. Have you seen that? No, I haven't. Yeah, the labels are setting up, uh preemptively setting up vinyl shops that are ran by the record label. And you as the fan don't know that. You're thinking you're just going to a regular vinyl show. But this is all backed by them to sell their product.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, part of the reason they lost that lawsuit is because they read some of the emails. There were emails that leaked from people inside of Live Nation. And in the emails, people were who worked at Live Nation was like, look at these people over over overspending for this. They look so stupid. Uh, one of the emails said, We're robbing them blind, baby. And the other email was like, yo, I'm gonna charge them $60 for parking. I'm gonna charge them another $100 for more for this patch of grass. Like, they was clowning niggas. Oh my god, man. In the emails, like, straight robber baron, gilded age era, clowning niggas.
SPEAKER_00Damn, man.
SPEAKER_01You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00Damn, man. Capitalism, man. It just ruins everything, dog.
SPEAKER_01Liquid death. Um shout out to Wiz Khalifa, because I think he's invested in liquid death. And, you know, I'm down for anybody who's about their business and about their bag. And, you know, Wiz Khalifa is a stand-up dude. But I just found out that Live Nation is involved with Liquid Death. I remember going to venues back in the day, it's like, yo, why is all the water in cans? What liquid death? Like, the liquid death is at every venue, and I didn't realize this because Live Nation was like, no, drink this, drink this.
SPEAKER_00Man, I what are some of the more crazier incidents you've seen where you knew, like, damn, the industry is pushing this product on people and they falling for it? Like, from conception, you saw something happen and you were like, Y'all really up on that?
SPEAKER_01Like Second Life. You remember Second Life? Aaron, you remember Second Life? It was like a virtual reality world, like a Sims world, where they were like, they were really encouraging artists to get a Second Life page, and so that you could like they were trying to figure out how to like lawnmower man this shit. Where we're gonna make money on in a digital space, you gonna have you do a concert in Second Life, you have fans in Second Life, and we're gonna get this bread. And um, I did that for a couple months, and it was really stupid. It's really dumb. It was like Max Headroom. You know what I'm saying? Like, um, let me think, what else that the industry tried to push on us?
SPEAKER_00I feel like you didn't.
SPEAKER_01360 deals, but I mean, I was already, you know, I was already on my way to legacy artists when 360 deals became a thing. So no one ever came to me. So you never had a 360. No, no one ever even dare walk in a room and how dare you. For my era, that's the standard. How dare you? My era, that's the standard deal, man. No, I realized it was an error when that became the standard. All of us. Like I said, industry standard is really all of places.
SPEAKER_00My age bracket then had a 360. You cap if you say you ain't had one. Because that was just the standard, you are in the office deal. You know what I'm saying? Crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't know. Um, what else is there?
SPEAKER_00I feel like a lot of the liquor stuff, like, I don't think people realize how much Siroc was being pushed onto them. Like, like people probably thought it was just like a lifestyle drink. But then, like, when I that's the thing that was kind of eye-opening to me personally when I watched all this Diddy stuff was like, yo, he really for real, for real, will take a product and just say, fuck it, I'm selling it to y'all.
SPEAKER_01I mean, well, remember what Coltrane was saying, when it comes to urban marketing or multicultural marketing, the first people in it is cigarettes and alcohol for obvious reasons. When I first started my career, the first people that was showing up to give Talib Kwali conscious rapper money was liquor brands and cigarette band. Like, I did a tour with uh with cool cigarettes.
SPEAKER_00So I got a funny story about that. I won one of them cool cigarette battles.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, cool cigarettes was, and cool cigarettes was the shit when my parents was was kids. Yeah. But it wasn't a shit. You know what I'm saying? They was they was trying to like infiltrate through the hip-hop. But um, that cool tour, uh, I I couldn't finish that tour. I couldn't finish that tour. I I left that tour. And it wasn't the first time I left the tour. Um, I left that tour. Um, I left a Coca-Cola tour called Itik Git. Uh, if you if you don't know, you don't go, was the name of the tour. And uh they had the the tickets on the on the like the if you twist the cap, you won the ticket. But it was like me, it was Black Star, Bismarck E Rest in peace, and Black IPs. And at that time, Bismarck E was the only one of us who was famous. So who's going to this? Who what what person randomly opens up a Coca-Cola? It's like, oh, I'm definitely going to the Bismarck E, Black Eyes P's, Black Star tour in 1998.
SPEAKER_00That's crazy. Yeah, my man lifestyle and me faced off in the finals of one of those cool battles, right? But life was kind of hip to the whole plot. So he was pro protesting back then, like in his rhyme, he was dissing cool cigarettes and shit. Like, y'all niggas hella whack for trying to basically what you say and infiltrate hip hop. Right. And uh, I just remember that very vividly. That was like, damn, the cigarette companies is getting invested in the culture.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they uh they will they will come and and try to infiltrate. I had a uh liquor situation with Seagram's gin. And um, it was no Seagrum's company, I don't remember the exact liquor brand, but it was something that Seagram's owns because Seagram's is a big, huge distribution for a bunch of people. And um, I remember that the deal was I was gonna do like a voice spot on the radio, but I was still trying to like make Inkiru books work. So I was like, okay, y'all gotta give X amount of dollars to Inkiru Books. And that's how I justified in my mind. Because I, at that stage in my career, it was very early, but I was still like, uh, I felt the way about doing a liquor brand for what I represent. And I felt it felt hypocritical, but I tried to justify it, right? Um, but I didn't read my contract well enough. And so I did the vocal spot. They didn't say my name in it. If you knew my voice, you heard, but this was early in my career, like maybe 99, 2000. So it wasn't like I was, people could pick up on my voice like that. But I did the voice spot, and I got the money for the bookstore, and I got money for my bank account, but they were within their rights to use an image from my music video somehow. And so they used a still from I think uh waiting for the DJ, and they blew it up to like life size. And so they had like a life size cut out of me, like advertising they brand in all the liquor stores in the hood all over the country. And you know, liquor stores in the hood, when they put up an ad or they put up like a little display, them shit stay up forever, bro. They don't switch them and rotate them. Like you might see the same display up for like two years. Generations. Yep. The same display. So for years, I don't see it no more, but for years, when I would go in the liquor store, and I know I'm admitting that I would spend a lot of time in good liquor stores, but for years, when I would go in a liquor store, I'd walk in, I'd see myself, like, and I'd be like, ugh. So that's a lesson for all you young artists is have standards. And don't let anybody tell you that something is wrong with having standards, because having standards will keep you from being like, uh, when you get older.
SPEAKER_00I did want to ask you though, at what point in the game did you really decide to go independent? Like, because I know a lot of cats that come from the major system, and when they try to go independent, it don't work for them. They're used to the major system treatment and rollout and everything. But what in you said, man, I'm going independent and I could I could do it? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, Ruckus folded and not folded, Rock is sold their interest to Universal. I want to say, hmm, uh, when did that happen? I wanna say 2005, 2006, like right after Beautiful Stroggle. I feel like Beautiful Stroggle was the last record that I did with Raucus. Maybe I might even be incorrect about that, but mid-2000s, Raucus got out of the business. And a lot of us got our rights transferred to companies that Universal owned, um, Interscope, Geffen, whatever, we'll have you, MCA, um, which I ended up on doing deals with all three. And um my experience with that was not good. Raucus was a great experience because I could walk into Jared's office, I could get him on the phone, you know, we didn't agree on everything. Um, they didn't just give me a blank check, but it was very much hands-on and direct with them. Now I'm in a major label where I'm just part of a label that they acquired. I have no relationships, I have no product manager, I have nobody in the building. You need someone in the building to have your back. And I had nobody in the building to have my back. I was just an artist on a label. Um, and then, especially in the era when it was Endoscope, it was like Gwen Stefani, Black Eyed Peas, um, you know, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, like these are the artists that that label really cared about. So, whatever was going on, besides, if you wasn't part of those camps, it was just like whatever. Um so I bounced around from label to label. I did a deal with Warner Brothers that I put out the Reflection Eternal album with, the second one. And I had a terrible experience there. I didn't like Warner Brothers at all. I asked to be released from that deal like the week that we dropped that album. And they agreed. Like we just didn't like each other. You know what I'm saying? So it was the amicable split. Um and then I ended up uh with capital, EMI. But even with that situation, like I was trying to approach it like I thought that I would have more resources with that situation than I actually ended up having. And when I realized how much of the work fell on me, I was like, well, why do I even need their money if it's just a loan that I gotta pay back? At this point, I'm a viable artist, money's coming in. So if if I'm just asking people for a loan that I gotta pay back at a high interest rate, I might as well bet on myself and give myself a loan. I might as well just do these shows and invest in myself and God bless Drew Ha and Noah and Buckshot, Duck Down, and 3D distribution, because at the same time that I was definitely sure that I was going to go independent, they were starting an independent distribution company. Duckdown is one of the most significant, important outfits in hip-hop, labels in hip-hop, and I learned so much from them because my first record that I truly did independent. Well, let me back up. The first record that I did independent ever was Right About Now. It was a mixtape I did with uh Alan Grumblat. What was the name of his label? I forget. He's, yeah, whatever. But um I did Right About Now. Uh it was like a mixtape, but it was like an album. Then I did uh Liberation for Free. I dropped it on MySpace. So that was technically independent, but from there it was like Gutta Rainbows. Gut a Rainbows with Duck Down. Um Recipe Sean Price. That's that album with Sean Price on it. Um I learned a lot. That album I did with Duck Down was the first time in my whole career, and that's 2011. I started my career in 1998. That's the first time in my whole career that within a couple of months, I received a check and I was in the black. And that had never happened before. And I was like, oh, this is the way to go. So really doing that project with them, and after that, like Jivodem Media was formed around that time, uh, Gutter Rainbow's 3D distribution, which is really ducked down, and Jivodi Media, and that's the first time we really rolled out independently.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Yeah, so you didn't, it sounds like you didn't have a lot of uh reservation about it. Like you kind of knew I'm going independent.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I knew once I knew, but I knew from experience. I didn't know. I talk about LP a lot, and we talked about him on on this show because he had the foresight to know that he could do it on his own from jump. And, you know, hindsight is 2020. And I'm glad that my life took the twist and turns it did. I'm glad that I learned the way I did. But sometimes you think in retrospect, man, if I had gone independent way earlier, if I had followed that LP model, what would life have been like? But I mean, that's just speculatory and that's just like, you know, Marvel timeline shit. It's not real. It's not real. But I mean, you know, sometimes your mind wanders.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00I think it's all intriguing for me because it's like you also got to go in there and get a couple hit records off before you went independent. So it's almost like you robbed a bank and then was like, aye job, I'm gone.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that's a that's an interesting part of my story, is that I feel like what I have done is a minor miracle for me to be a conscious artist and to have gotten a couple of hits. Like, there are people who come to my shows just to hear Getby. You know what I'm saying? There are people who come to my show to just hear, like, never been in love. You know what I'm saying? Like, there are people who don't know me beyond those records. Um, it's interesting, because to some people, I am technically a one-hit wonder. Get by was a huge hit. The blast was a modest hit, Hot Thing was a modest hit, Never Been in Love was a modest hit. Come here was like a modest hit. Um, Miguel, shout out to Miguel. But get by was really like a real legitimate hit record. But hey man, I'll take it. You know what I'm saying? Like, do you know how hard it is to make one good song? Yeah, much less a hit record. Yeah. Like, that's why I put respect on anyone who's attempting to make the music, to make the art. I don't care whether or not I like what you make. If you make it, it is art. Yeah. I saw Mecca talking to Bad Fue about this. He was like, yo, if you make it, it's art. Some art is good, some art is bad, it's all subjective. But if you make it, it's art.
SPEAKER_00That's real. I I actually do agree with that. Um that's a lot of pro provocative conversations going on in the culture because shit is changing for real. Um, it's just not the same no more. Um as we see some of the legends get older, what do you think are some of the jewels that we might be losing? Cats might go independent, they're not hand-to-hand hustling product no more. You know, all these original martial art like trades of being an independent MC are lost.
SPEAKER_01I kind of think like it's coming back to that though. That's from my perspective, from my vantage point, and my vantage point is very privileged in this. It's earned privilege, but it's privileged. Um, it seems like it's getting back to that. It seems like it's getting back to analog. It seems like it's getting back to people wanting to touch and feel and have a real human experience with the music. Um, my son's generation, and even people younger than him and my daughter, they are collecting magazines, they are collecting vinyl, they are buying dismans, they are, you know what I'm saying? And it's they're trying to experience things in a tactile way. And why wouldn't they? Imagine if you grew up in a world where you never experienced these things. I remember the first time my son saw a record player, he was 12 years old, he was blown away. He was like, What is that? And I felt ashamed as a parent. How does he not know what this is? You know what I'm saying? Like, and he's like, I'm like, that's a turntable. It's like, he's like, what does it do? He's like, that plays music. I remember maybe he was a little younger than that. Maybe he was like 11 or so, but whatever. I remember at that era in that time, I was like, oh wow, he is in a world where this is like very foreign to him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, man. I was building with your son.
SPEAKER_01He's a smart dude, man. Um we could learn lessons from them. I, you know, you asked me what I think is the jewels that are being lost, but I'm more interested in the jewels that are being gained from the next generation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's now that's a bar right there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's a bar right there.
SPEAKER_01Like speaking of the live nation thing, these are fans. Taylor Swift, first of all, shout out to the Taylor Swift fan base and the Taylor Swifties or whatever they call them. I gotta put nothing but respect on those people and whatever their names is. Like Taylor Swift is not someone whose music that I know. I don't know a Taylor Swift song, you know what I'm saying? Like it's not my forte subjectively. But um her fans show up and show out for her in many different ways. And this time, they did it in such a way. These are very young people. They did it in such a way where they went and found their representatives. You know what I'm saying? They ended up at Congress. They went to Washington, D.C., and they spoke to these people and they were like, no, you can't price gal just like this anymore. There's too many service fees. We're not going for it. We wanna see Taylor Swift, and we wanna see Taylor Swift now. You know what I'm saying? And they stood on business and they got Congress and they to be involved, and they got uh lawmakers to be involved, and they got the Justice Department to be involved. And they won. I don't know how it's gonna play out because I don't think they've from where we're at right now, they haven't rendered like a verdict or how they're gonna break it up or whatever. But it's a significant, timely, symbolic, important victory. And so I guess my question to you, as someone younger than me, as someone who is more tapped in with the activist community, what can the movement for black lives learn from this? What can activists on our end learn from how the Swifties tapped into something where they got actual change happening on the law books for something that is unfair to all of us?
SPEAKER_00I think people want to move. I think a lot of people want to take time to try to get everybody on the same wavelength as far as ideology. It's on the same wavelength as far as what we consider to be factual or uh, you know, an educated premise from the same exact educated premise for us to all approach a subject. And in what the way I organize a lot of times, that part of it don't really matter. Uh because I may have the situation infected with a few people who are, you know, up the code. But more times than not, I'm real I really need a group of people that's that's happy to be in action, that's thirsty to be in action around something, that's passionate about being in action around something, and they just want to be in motion. Um I find a lot of times black organizations uh from the millennial era uh they spend a lot of time trying to imitate the 60s or uh trying to reinvent what the Panthers already did. Uh folks have very little context for the movement in the 90s, which I think is a shame because in the the late 90s especially, they were about motion, they were about movement. Um and I think our era has come to be more about kind of like meeting for meeting's sake and then calling it political education. Um it's like, how many times can you do that before we see what an actual stress test is? Like in in the labor movement, they used to do these things called stress tests, where they would pick an issue and say, you know what, we're gonna throw down on this issue just to see what our actual power is, what what our actual ability to turn out as an organization is. And I don't see a lot of black organizations doing that. Some like what the Swifties did sounds like a stress test, like we're gonna show a show of power no matter what happens, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go in this direction, you know.
SPEAKER_01So yeah. Um we're living in unprecedented times where people are trying to figure out how to navigate a digital landscape in a way that we never had before. And with the social media aspect of it, how do you feel like I agree with everything you said, but how do you feel like social media has impacted what you just spoke about, for better or for worse?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's it's a give and take with the socials. Uh I feel like I'm at the crossroads of it because I'm I'm a little older than like people who know a world. There's people who don't know a world without cell phones. I know a world without without the cell phone, you know what I'm saying? But there's people who don't. And a lot of them are politicized against against technology. Like we went to this, like, for example, last night at uh Sunday dinner, a lot of folks were talking about this data center issue that's coming into the community. And rightfully so, they pissed off at the data center.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But for me, as a strategist, I'm looking like, well, how do we start to educate ourselves and our communities on how to use some of these tools in our favor? Because irregardless, they're gonna plan them there.
SPEAKER_01Which is the word in a dictionary, by the way. It's official now. Irregardlessness now trans. Because language is fluid, bro. Language keeps going. Like that used to not be a word people used to get on you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. It wasn't a word at first, you're right. It wasn't.
SPEAKER_01It's the word now in the dictionary. It actually wasn't a word. Shout out to irregardless. You know what I'm saying? We made that happen. See, see what happens when the people get together? Enough of us say irregardless all the time.
SPEAKER_00It's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man, that's the power of organization.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, dawg. So I think that's the next level of all of this. Like imagining us using that technology correctly. I mean, not necessarily correctly, just to our benefit. Uh not being caught in the gap of it all, like we have been with like the internet, you know, the technology gap before between us and white families as far as the Wi-Fi goes. Like, uh I'm fearing that if we don't start addressing the AI situation from a different conversation, it's gonna be an even bigger gap with that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, you know what I always say? You know, the robots are gonna be racist because the people are racist. And they learn from us. The people programming the racist detail, too. They learn from us. That's the shit that'd be crazy, man. Like, I would I just wrote an essay on Substack about uh, it was a response to my good brother W.
SPEAKER_00Camayu Bell. I saw that. So break that down. I wanted to ask you what was going on with that. What's that all about?
SPEAKER_01Um, well, first of all, shout out to Camayo Bell, who is a great comedian and someone who is brave enough to use his platform to speak out against injustice. And he's very funny and he's very witty, and he's very smart. And I'm proud to have him as an ally and as a representative.
SPEAKER_00He's a great guy. I always connect with him when I go out to his business.
SPEAKER_01I don't really, I've never really tapped in with him like that. I'm sure we've met a couple times.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we've met more than a couple times.
SPEAKER_01Um but um he wrote an essay in which he was basically saying that Andrew Tate should not be allowed on Substack. And now Andrew Tate, for the watching audience, in case you don't know, is a right-wing firebrand. He is someone who was very misogynistic. He has rose to fame by talking shit about women. Uh, he also has uh uh charges, uh sex trafficking, uh rape charges, uh all around like Camayu Bell says says in the piece, he's a piece of shit, right? And he's very toxic. Uh but so Camayu Bell is someone who knows the owners of Substack, the founders of Substack. And in his essay, he's essentially trying to shame them into getting rid of Andrew Tate. And all his points I agree with, except for the part where he talks about how he blocks trolls and he ignores trolls. He's like, I'm so good at blocking, ignoring trolls. And he described his Substack experience as living in Destroy Fascismville. He's like, I live in the black section of Substack, and I'm paraphrasing, he put it way better than I paraphrasing, but he's like, I live in the black station section, we don't even see that. Like, I'm in destroy fascismville. Like, and he's like, it's because I block and ignore the trolls. So he said, People told me about the Nazi problem is a Substack, but I don't really see it. And that's where that triggered me. You know what I'm saying? Because I'm like, well, they're calling me a nigger a hundred times a day on there, and you're talking about you don't see it. And so, you know, I sound like a broken record, but I always say that part of the problem on in online spaces is the fact that we block and ignore the trolls instead of confronting and exposing them. Um and when you block and ignore trolls, racist trolls, instead of confronting and exposing them, what you're doing is you're signaling to the platform that it's safe for them to be there. Right? Because you're not ending it. If there's a report button, you shouldn't report it. If you don't have the bandwidth to be like a Talib Kwali and to be like, fuck you, you're a Nazi, whatever. And you I understand why people, especially people who have professional relationships, don't have the time and the energy. And not everybody should be like me, right? But everybody should in the public square that we claim is important, everybody should be reporting. And when I say reporting on social media, you report a Nazi who called me a nigger on social media, that's not snitching. We're not in the fucking streets, no one's getting arrested, police are not involved. But if you say that this community is important, then community has to take care of community. We have to look out for each other, right? So when I read Camao Bell's piece, I'm like, I stand in solidarity with him. But is he also reporting when he sees this? And I, you know, he um responded to my piece and he gave me a lot of love back, and he said, we agree more than you think we do, and I do be reporting. And I wasn't even, it wasn't like a call out, or it wasn't even a call in. Because, like, he's not doing anything wrong. It's just strategy and tactics. Here's my strategy. That's what it was about.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I remember I did a uh call, ironically enough. He does a lot of stuff with Live Free too. And I remember I did a call, and um, he was on some some call I was on over the pandemic. And I got on that call tripping because I was turked up. I was living in Ferguson at the time, and I'm isolated over there, and I get on a call, I'm like, oh snap, this is one of the first times I done talked to the real world since the pandemic kicked off, and I got on there calling people lames and stuff. And he's he was like, I hope I'm not one of the lames. I was like, no, not you. We're talking about the actual Nazis, motherfuckers.
SPEAKER_01Right, right, right. And look, Donald Trump is if he's not a Nazi, he's definitely Nazi adjacent. I call him a Nazi. Um, this man has been credibly, in my opinion, accused of pedophilia. Uh, he has been filed liable for rape. Um, 30-something women have said he sexually assaulted them. And I believe him because he said himself on tape, I grabbed him by the pussy. In his depot, his deposition, they asked him, like, do you actually believe that? He said, Well, they let you do it if you're a star. And they're like, Are you a star? He's like, Yeah, I'm a star. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, so the fact is, is that the majority of white voters in this country voted for this guy twice. Twice. Right? He's a Nazi pedophile rapist. And this is the choice that they chose, right? So if that's the case, I don't believe that most Americans, regardless of race, are Nazi pedophile rapist. I don't believe that most Americans condone that. Right? So, how does someone like that win twice? Well, someone like that wins twice, not because the majority of people support him. He wins twice because the majority of people who know better don't do better. The majority of people who know better would rather let a white man win than vote for a black woman. The majority of people who know better would rather just be apathetic or complacent when they see racism, when they see people being misogynistic, homophobic, bigoted, all that shit online, and they just they see it and they block and they scroll past. You're doing that for yourself. And sometimes they'd be like, okay, well, you know, why would I spend any time trying to change a racist? And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. You don't speak out and confront this shit to change a racist, because fuck a racist. You're not trying to save the racist soul. You're trying to show the target of racism or the target of bigotry that you stand in solidarity with them. You try, you show them, like, I got your back, like, we're gonna stand up to this together, and we're gonna be vocal about this together. You wanting to change a racist and thinking that you like Michelle Pfeiffer and Dangerous Vons. You know what I'm saying? I'm gonna change your soul. That's about you. That's like a woman be like, I can change him. That's that's your ego. You standing in solidarity with the target of racism is that's about the people. And it's really, to me, to take it a step further, based on anti-blackness, because you see a racist bullying someone online. And instead of standing with the person that the racist is bullying, you be like, damn, I gotta, I gotta change this racist. Man, fuck with you. That's anti-black because you think that that's more important for the racist to come into the light.
SPEAKER_00For them it is, though, because they see themselves. They see themselves. They gotta go to this is what I always think about when um I'm writing a piece about I didn't finish it, but I need to put it out. It's about the comment section. And it's about how your average white friend, even the most non-racist white person that you could think of, would tell you, oh, these are just a few crazies in the comments, right? And then Or better yet, oh, it's just a bot.
SPEAKER_01That shit get on my nerve because that shit automatically gives you a pass to be like, I don't gotta do shit. How you know it's a bot? You have no proof, but you know that's a bot. I'm sorry, continue. No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00But so with the piece, I'm like, yo, y'all still gotta go to Thanksgiving dinner and uh the soccer game and whatever social uh activities with people you know in them comment sections saying the craziest shit you can fathom.
SPEAKER_01These are your neighbors, these are your friends, these are the people that serve you food, these are the people that you know I'm saying, yeah.
SPEAKER_00That kind of like the whole like black lives matter. You know, that's how you kind of know it's like all bullshit coming from white people sometimes. Because it's like before you even get over here protesting with me, did you handle the shit that was in your backyard? Like you had to drive over here to our neighborhood to get like to protest with us. You ain't from over here. You could have handled that over there in Dogtown, you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01Like, yeah. I mean, the fact is that a lot of racist come into my mentions on Substack and on Facebook or whatever and talk about pattern recognition. I'll post about something that is pro-black or something that's about social justice, and they'd be like, Wait, you know, we just treat black people like this because of pattern recognition. And not when I say to them, like, all right, so can I hold you accountable for the genocide and the rape and the torture that comes with imperialism and colonialism? Like, are we gonna recognize the pattern of the European? You wanna have that conversation? They usually shut the fuck up when I say that. Um, but that be the first shit they go to is the pattern recognition. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00Man, on some crazy shit. I don't even know if this is like in the same range of subject. I'm seeing white people online say that they can validate the teachings of Yakub.
SPEAKER_01You sound like Jack Harley.
SPEAKER_00I said, what the hell? How did we get to the point where white people are reading up on Yakub? Like this one white dude was breaking it down. He was like, I think it's true. You gotta know the nature of this and that and that. I don't want to go into what he said because he was going all the way down the rabbit hole with it. But I thought that was the craziest thing that this is where we are now. Like, um, I think that's a weird thing that's going on nowadays. Like, people are just searching for some type of doctrine. Like, that's how MAGA got to where they were, where they got. People just want a doctrine. And it used to work in a positive way, where like uh you joined the NOI because you wanted to be indoctrinated in the in a positive way. You joined the five percenters because you wanted to be indoctrinated in a positive way. Nowadays, people just want something, man, and I think it's so intriguing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but you you, you know, you got a point there. People have racists in their lives. Uh, white people particularly have racists in their lives, and they justify with like, well, you you know your dad, and the idea of not having conversations about hot button topics, politics, race, religion. We don't talk about that at dinner. We don't talk about that in home. That's the whole problem. That's designed to keep a white supremacist system and a white supremacist status quo on top, because you can't dismantle what you're not willing to deal with. And that's the same thing that goes with these trolls. If we're spending all of our time online, um, racism is real online. And the only reason why you and I should be and could be able to have these conversations is because we're not just online. We're also outside. If we weren't outside, anything we had to say about any type of online activity would be nonsense. People should should feel free to dismiss it if we're not really doing the work outside.
SPEAKER_00That's deep. I never really looked at it like that. Uh, you know, like the the outside activity validates the necessity of the online activity. Never thought it like that, thought about it like that. Um I remember when people used to chastise you just for taking pictures at the protests. Like, why y'all got y'all phones out? Now it's standard. Everybody's phones is out, you know. But things change, man. More things stay the same, things change. I do think that the internet comment section for white folks in America, like, we gotta start addressing it. Because it's it's bad for y'all, bro. It's bad. It's bad, bro. It don't matter what city you in, it don't matter what state you in. You get into them comments of the most popular publication that's clicked on by a lot of white people, nigga, it's the pits of hell. It's the pits of fucking hell. It don't make y'all look good. It's terrible. Like if I was a white American, I would be on a whole campaign to clean up the fucking comment section. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But yeah, man. So as we move forward with, let me ask you this. Um what we got a couple surprises in store for the people, I think.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, do you want to tell them about the surprises, or is that gonna make it no longer a simple?
SPEAKER_00A lot of my homeboys be stopping me in the street. They want breadcrumbs, you know. They they want to know what's what's in store. They be they be trying to come to me like I could directly tell you what to drop. People are starting to walk up to me more and more on the street. Hey man, tell Talib, y'all gotta drop the woo-woo-woo episode. We know y'all was talking to so-and-so, man. We want to see the blah, blah, blah episode.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna tell you what it is. So, um, you and me have never had this discussion, but we'll have it here in public. So, on People's Party, part of what we did was we timed everything with the release of like the information and the photos and the pictures. So you didn't see a picture of someone until that episode is about to drop. But with you, you was like, yo, we here with this person, we here with that, you on the gram and all over every place. And I'm not mad at it, I have no problem with it because it's like, yo, that's what we're doing, right? And you know, no fear of time. You know what I'm saying? You know what it is. But because you do that, I haven't been doing that. So you haven't seen me post no type of pictures of any type of uh, and also my platform is bigger than yours. I'm I'm reaching more people. So I feel like for you, it makes sense for you to be like, here's me with this person. You know what I mean? With me, it's gotta be, I treat it like more of a like a surprise. But um, I don't know, like, you know, this episode, uh, I don't know exactly which day this is or which y'all watch it, but I'll tell you like this. Um, we did a Blue Note show uh a couple of weeks ago, and a lot of the guests on that show have pulled up. And we got a lot of them. And and you know what I'm saying, shout out to Blue and Exile. You know what I'm saying? We just recently put out that episode, and the new album is fantastic. Shout out to Mickey Facts, we just dropped that. If you're just watching us now, you haven't seen these episodes. Uh, shout out to uh, you know, Rod Adams and Wintana and Toussaint from the earlier episodes Rod Dukes, Nikki, uh Duncan Smith, um, Coltrane Curtis. Um, but like we said when we started, y'all pulled up for me and Teff. And we really appreciate that. It's not just about the guest. And that's very important to us because the podcast space, particularly the black podcast space, is a little ridiculous. And it's not enough people talking about real issues, like some of that real shit we talked about. I'm not hearing it. And shout out to the people who are doing it, like like grits and eggs and you know, other people I see out there, you know what I'm saying, doing their thing. Um, but we need more. We need more like positive, uplifting, pro-black, conscious content in this space, man. And um, and the guest, what I like about this show is that people's parties dependent on a guest that has certain accolades. But this, anybody could pull up. You know what I'm saying? Like you've seen our friends pull up on the show.
SPEAKER_00From various walks of life, everything. That's what's been dope about it for me. It's like, you never know who we're gonna end up talking to. You never know what we're gonna talk to them about, you never know where we're gonna be at. It almost feels like being a part of like an MPR, PBS hip hop program or something. You know what I'm saying? Like, you you never know where we broadcasting live from Bolivia, you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man, we gotta be fluid, man. In this era, like, because you and me move around so much, we got to be fluid. Um and the music takes us all around the world, and we're so blessed to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_00The thing is, yo, I'm seeing how much love Black Star gets on a global level, bro. That shit's crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Black Star is a phenomenon. Um, I was just showing you the clip of Yassine Bey on the Nell Carter show. Uh man, he's been doing this for a long time. He's been a superstar for a long time. Yassine Bey was in a Michael Jackson video. You know what I'm saying? You ever seen that?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man. If you don't know, look that up. Yassin Bey and Michael Jackson and MJ, and and Michael Jackson is having this moment right now. And if you like us, you grew up on MJ, you know what I'm saying? Like, he's the origin story for a lot of artists. I think we fucked up when we allowed them to call him the king of pop. Because, yeah, he's the king of pop, but that's not the music he's making. It's not, man, it's so much bigger than pop. He belonged to us, you know what I'm saying? He belonged to RB, he belonged to soul, black music, like the people he was looking at, from Lil' Richard to James Brown to the people in front of him. It's like, man.
SPEAKER_00You're right. They call him pop, but I really don't even know what his actual genre is, because he was doing everything. His genre is Michael Jackson music. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01Have you seen that film? Not yet. I'm gonna go see it tomorrow. I'm gonna see it tomorrow, word is bond. Um but let me ask you this. Since we're on a show, call, let me ask you this. Yeah. And I wrote down some thoughts because I was thinking about it. Um got into your head. You had to make a choice. Top five. No. Top ten Michael Jackson songs.
SPEAKER_00I can't do it. I'm gone. I'm dead. You're gone. Yeah, I'm out of here. I can't do ten mics.
SPEAKER_01I wrote down some to like start a conversation about what I think are mine. And um, this list, I don't know. It's like I spent a lot of like shifting and changing in positions. Because I don't know. You know what I'm saying? Um, and I'm not talking about Jackson 5.
SPEAKER_00I never even thought to even give myself this test.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm not talking about Jackson 5, strictly Michael Jackson solo. Okay. Top 10 for right now in this moment, because this could change. Um, number one, Rock With You, number two, wanna be starting something, number three, PYT, number four, human nature, number five, Billy Jean, number six, beat it, number seven, smooth criminal, number eight, don't stop till you get enough, number nine. Mmm. See, I don't know. Cause I got to number nine, and I gotta pick the number ten spot. But for the number ten spot, I don't know. Is it thriller? Way you make me feel, remember the time, man in the mirror.
unknownOh my god.
SPEAKER_00I can't even do it. It's like I can't even do the ranking game with those songs. They're just too good. Too good. I can't even do it. I wouldn't even, I I some music I just take out of the necessity to rank. Like it is what it is. I wouldn't even be able to just even that I wouldn't be able to do. That's like, I can't do it.
SPEAKER_01In your opinion, what made Michael Jackson so special that he touches people, whether you know about music or not, whether you care about music or not, when you see the impact that he has on, you know, just little children. You know what I'm saying? Like, and people have thrown dirt and smut on his name, terms of certain allegations and stuff, but I'm talking about the purity, the pure like reaction and response that children have when they hear his music. Where do you think that is coming from?
SPEAKER_00I think it comes from him coming from Gary, Indiana, to be honest with you. That's a very Midwest answer. Uh break that down. Gary is like the the the slum of the slums. So, like, there's a lot of vilification of Joe Jackson going on, but it'd be coming from motherfuckers that would never raise their own kids in Gary, Indiana. You know what I mean? Like, you wouldn't raise no family under that conditions either. You would have been just as hard on your kids to get the hell up out of there too, because I always baffle people like that. Like, well, why did Joe do this? Motherfucker, take a trip to Gary and figure it out. But um, I think his genuine connection to a black experience and to poverty and in his lifetime, he knew what it was like to be Michael Jackson that had everything, and he knew what it was like to be Michael Jackson that had nothing. So you hear that in his music, you know, he was like a patron saint of uh people that didn't have shit sometimes. Like, you know, he would go, you know, even for him to go to like South American countries and all I want to say is that they don't really care about the biggest. He's dropping bombs, you know. He's like the first like global star like that that was kind of confronting the mythological Illuminati. Not the, you know, not saying that the Illuminati is real in a sense, but saying like the myth of the Illuminati, he was the first like big phenomenon kind of like challenging that, like challenging in that, you know, like dropping songs. We're like, we don't know who this nigga talking to. He's talking to somebody, you know what I'm saying? Like, I just think that he had an element of consciousness in his stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it was motivated from his genuine life, his his actual real life, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Rest in peace to the king of pop. You know what I'm saying? Like a lot of us would not be here without Michael Jackson. And um, yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing that film. I love biopic uh biopics, biopics. I love them.
SPEAKER_00Um I can't stand them, John. Really? Tell me why. Because you know, they be using the headlines to make the movies.
SPEAKER_01Well, the thing about uh Biopic is it's not an autobiography, it's not a documentary, it's a piece of art. So you have to go into it knowing that. You have to go into it looking like, okay, like this is like an interpretation. A lot of artists would not be the artist that they are without the inspiration of Michael Jackson. We are all connected by him. And um, yeah, man, I'm gonna go see the movie, and then I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna report. I don't know when. You know what I'm saying? You might have to wait a couple episodes.
SPEAKER_00Hip hop fans. Y'all don't know how big of a movie Buff Talibwali actually is. Oh, yeah, man. I watched films. Those references and those punchlines and those bars and even the quotes. He watches a lot of movies. That's where all that comes from, you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01You got it, you got favorite movies? You got like a top five favorite movies?
SPEAKER_00Um, I'm more of a documentary dude, you know what I'm saying? Like I watch a lot of- He's like, I don't got time for fiction. The movement doesn't have time for fiction. I'd be trying to get my trying to get my time travel on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_00So I think that's what's the most interesting thing about living nowadays. If I want to watch three hours of 1920, guess what, nigga? I can. You know what I'm saying? If I want to create a couple of things. Oh, yeah, and see what people were really actually fucking doing.
SPEAKER_01Now I appreciate the uh the art of creating something, um, putting something together. Uh so, you know, my top movies, I I don't have like a list in order, but I could tell you the movies that have impacted me the most are like Spike Lee Joints, uh, Do the Right Thing, Mo Better Blues, Malcolm X, uh, Godfather, Godfather 2, City of God, Blues Brothers, Big Lebowski. Classics. Um, I like Christopher Nolan a lot. I like Interstellar, I like Inception. Um, I like The Prestige. Uh yeah, Cohen Brothers, Spike Lee, Scorsese. I like Goodfellas, I like Casino. Yeah, man, that rounds out my list.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my favorite movie, you're probably gonna be like, that's a trash movie. Paid in Fool.
SPEAKER_01Paid in Fool is not a trash movie. Pay the Fool is a a great piece of art. Yeah, I love Pay't. Um especially that it was made by essentially amateur filmmakers and amateur actors with Cameron's. Cameron's performance in the movie is the heart of the movie. And he's performing against Wood Harris, who's no slouch, and Makai Pfeiffer, who's no slouch. These are amazing human beings and amazing actors. Cameron held his own because he wasn't actually acting, he was just embodying his neighborhood.
SPEAKER_00It goes into the hip-hop canon for me as one of the one of them, one of them joints. Like we would watch that movie over and over and try to talk like New Yorker. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Pulling slang from it, pulling fashion from it. So much stuff is in the in the real world from that movie, from generations of cats kind of like watching it and falling in love with it, that you know, it's a cult classic. Uh, also, I like Terminator 2. Terminator 2.
SPEAKER_01James Cameron.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, classic.
SPEAKER_01Terminator 2 is one of those tent pole movies that changed the way the films were made. Um, the liquid metal shit, the chase scene, the action. Except there's one scene in Terminator 2 when they're in the LA River scene with the with the truck and Arnold Schwarzenegger's on the bike, where he does a stunt on the bike where you could clearly see it ain't Arnold Schwarzenegger. And that's the one thing about Terminator 2 that I don't like is that they spent too much money and they had they had too big of a budget for me to know that that's a stunt man in that one scene. Bro, come on. That's facts. Come on. Shout out to James Cameron, though. I just saw um Avatar Fire and Ash. Um, I didn't like it. I'm not a fan of Avatar movies, but I watched them because they look spectacular. And James Cameron is such a great filmmaker that I watch it just for the epicness of watching the film, but it felt racist. Like it just, sorry. Sorry, James Cameron. Avatar feels racist. Them avatars always feel a little racist. Yeah, man. They got this one character named Spider. He's a white boy with dreads, which is like, that's, you know, that's that's triggering enough, right? But he's like, they call him monkey boy, which is like why y'all gotta do it. And he's like, he's he's a human that wants to live amongst the the Avatar people, right? But he he he he grew up with them, right? So he knows all their ways. He's like, he's like Tarzan, he's a Tarzan, uh archetype, right? But what's funny about him, he's also like a Chad. So the way he talks, his whole energy is like, bruh. But he's like a Chad Tarzan with dreads, it's weird. And this the plot hinges on him so much that I'm like, bro. And then of course, the blue people, all their traditions and they make up and the whole way they move is based on indigenous people from all over the world. Yeah, you know, so it's hard, it's hard to watch. But um, but yeah, Terminator 2 is a good James Cameron movie.
SPEAKER_00I like also I'm gonna in I'm I'm gonna give you one more. Okay. Forrest Gump, you know, oh yeah. I'm gonna give you one more.
SPEAKER_01Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know which one you're gonna get. Forrest Gump is a great movie, but does Forrest Gump, all right, so in the era where we're a lot more um uh politically correct. Yeah, and we're a lot more knowledgeable about ableism.
SPEAKER_00As well as other themes in that movie, because did Jenny have HIVAIDS? Yeah, she did. In the way they kind of exposed that, they would never have done it that way these days.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um Forrest Gump was autistic? I don't know. Yeah. I guess that movie's a victory for autism.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. They had they were making a sequel to that movie, ironically. There's a Forrest Gump sequel. There's a book you can buy that tells you what happens after he goes on whatever sagas in after that movie.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01He opened up a bunch of bubblegum shrimps. I eat a bubble gum shrimp.
SPEAKER_00In the book, he lost all of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was down in New Orleans cleaning up stuff. It's just a whole stuff.
SPEAKER_01That happens in the movie. I think that happens in the movie.
SPEAKER_00But they were about to make part two, but guess what happened? What? 9-11.
SPEAKER_01Tom Hanks is fantastic. I was just looking at him in a movie called Greyhound about this ship in World War II. Have you seen this movie called um, oh, what's the name of the movie? I don't remember the name of the movie, but he was in it. It's about Oakland. Uh Freaky Tales. I've never seen it. Never seen Freaky Tales? Freaky Tales uh is a movie uh that's narrated by Too Short. And Tom Hanks is in it? Yeah, and Pedro Pascal is in it. It's a movie about shenanigans that happened in the Bay Area. Tom Hanks is from the Bay Area. So it's a movie about like it tells this tale from three different perspectives of this situation that happens in front of this movie theater where these neo-Nazis are shouting at this uh black uh these two black female MCs and how people support them. But it shows like the different uh different things that happen when everybody leaves from that moment. And um the Nazis go and they they run into some issues, you go watch the movie. The black girls, the female rappers, they get invited to uh Too Short show and they end up rapping with Too Short, and they got Simba in there playing Too Short. What? Yeah, yeah, man, and Tom Hanks plays a video store owner. And um I think his name is like his name is like some sort of weird play on Tom Hanks. You know what I'm saying? The movie's very self-aware. But um, I enjoyed that man, freaky tales, man. If you are into like Bay Area culture, definitely check that movie out. I might check that joint out. Damn, man. Shout out to homie Mr. Fab out there, man. Shout out to Mr. Fab, one of my favorite MCs. For sure. You know what I'm saying? Quick story about Mr. Fab. I did an event in the Bay Area a long time ago. This is before Mr. Fab. Uh, this was like the school bus era, Mr. Fab. You know what I'm saying? And um, I'm in Oakland and I'm speaking to the community and this and that. And then at the end, somebody raised their hand in the back and he was like, Yeah, I'm Mr. Fab. And I had never heard of him. And everybody in there was like, oh my God, it's Mr. Fab. And I was like, Who's Mr. Fab? He's like, Yeah, I just want to say that um, I'm so happy Tyler uh came to the community to speak to us, and I'm so happy you got him. But there are rappers in this neighborhood and in this area, and y'all don't reach out to none of us. And I represent, y'all think that I don't have knowledge because I represent the like the hyphi movement. You know, I'm I represent the new young rappers, but I'm I'm here to let you know that we are tapped in with community. Y'all need to reach out to the local rappers as long as well as bring Talib Quali out. And me and him have been cool ever since.
SPEAKER_00That's a crazy story. Yeah. Salute, Mr. Fab. The Tyler Quali movie go be wild, y'all.
SPEAKER_01The movie go wild. I didn't know I had so much more life to live. Part two of the book is gonna come. This is, let me ask you this, I am Tyler Quali.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, man.
SPEAKER_01We'll see you on the next one.
SPEAKER_00Peace. I am the shaman, I'm back in the flesh. I kill him softer than David Koresh. I heard it Wesley was taking a check. I heard it crocked it was breaking the neck. Look at the sellout, they breaking the neck. I threw up the knife.