You know, I grew up playing sports, I take, you know, I take a lot of his philosophies on just the approach of how the approach each day and try to get better every day and be the best that you can be and not worrying about other people. Do not, you know, just focus on what you could do to be a better person.
Jared Easley:Welcome to starve the doubts. I'm your host, jared, easily joining me as a coast today is my good friend, Joe Bass. Hey Joe. Hey, what's up jared? Welcome to the show. It's a, I think your first time since you've cohosted with me, so I appreciate you making that effort today. Yeah, I'm trying to bring the level of the quality down just a little. Well that's uh, that's on me. But anyway. Hey, our guest today is great. Ellis, some of you may know him as Scragg Lee or Grade a, all kinds of cool music and stuff on Youtube and Grady, we really appreciate you taking time to sit down and chat with us. Man, I appreciate y'all for having me home. And uh, like you said, free say child lowering your standards.
Speaker 1:I'm going to do the kickoff question, Joe. I always like to ask people this. I don't always record it on the episodes, but I just curious. Great. What's the best concert you've ever been to? I would have to say grateful dead RFK stadium. Probably Ninety two or 91 maybe. Oh, nice. Wow. So that was before Jerry, before Jerry died. Okay. There you go. Now is actually actually sold pretzels at the RF can. It was an experience because I wasn't really into the dead or into that whole scene at that point in my life and it was allowed. It was an eyeopening experience. I'll say that.
Speaker 2:Hey asshole grilled cheeses in mountain dudes. So I feel you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Joe went to phish concerts and sold. I mean, yeah, kind of like transition, like the great. The deadheads all kinda like moved over to fish and kind of followed them around for a little bit too. I think at one point I was gonna say Joe came to me recently and he's like, Hey, I got a really interesting guy that I want you to consider interviewing on the podcast and I get that a lot from other people, so sometimes I'm a little bit Kinda like, Eh, who's the person this as soon as, as soon as joe tells me about anything, I immediately want to check it out because I trust dough. So actually this first question, I'm going to flip the Joe and then, then we'll come back to you. Grady is Joe, how'd you first learn about grady and, and then what is it about Brady that made you decide, hey, let's get him on the podcast?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the first time we came in contact, well I'd seen him making some comments, you know, facebook in different places, but I think grady is like in like our local crime group for Montgomery. And I had said, I think someone had gotten shot at the hospital and grading
Speaker 1:something that's not, that's the best place to get at the hospital. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Shot in the hospital. Is Montgomery Montgomery right there? So, so that's kind of, but I think at that point, great. He actually, well, I'll look into it.
Speaker 3:It was like, well, we know a couple of you were friends with the guy that I kind of grew up with when I was probably 11 or 12 years old. I was like, oh, well, if he knows him, he's a good guy. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's how we met Jerry. Weird. We've never met in person, but what was crazy, I started watching, you know, I'm not, this sounds kind of crappy to say, but I'm not impressed by many people. I was watching grading one night and he's, he's live streaming himself Kinda, you know, just putting cd's in these cases like mach 10. And I'm just like, dude, what's he doing there? And I was like, this kind of strange. First Time I saw a second time I looked and said, this dude's showing everybody's hustling. And next thing I know jared, I'm like washing dishes and it's like 8:00 at night and I'm, I'm in here working when usually I'd be playing fortnite or something like that. And, but I started watching him. He's unconventional, he says things that probably piss some people off, but he's got a lot of wisdom and a lot of the things that he says. So he really caught my attention. But it's hustle. When I saw that hustle man, just that, the live stream grady something that kind of. I don't know what it was, is like you're showing people hey gradients, inevitable. There's a lot of people that listen to this show around the world. They're not all going to be familiar with you. So can we just get some backstory? Oh, all
Speaker 3:right. Well yeah, I grew up military, lived a little bit everywhere. Korea, Texas, Oklahoma. Went to high school in Northern Virginia, tried my hand at college in a few spots, dropped out, never, never graduated college. After that, I was like, all right, I'm kind of figuring out life loss. Didn't have any direction. Took a trip to Oregon one summer with some friends. Ended up broke or rode a greyhound bus back three, four days salad, Bama. When I got back I was like, you know, I hate that feeling. I'm gonna. Get a job no matter what it is, going to get a job, whatever it is. I became, I got a job through a temp agency as a plumber. I didn't miss the first two years of work like I was everyday in this one day. So after that did that for four years. I always had a passion for music. I would do that at night when I come home from doing the plumbing up. Did not stay up till two in the morning and get right back up at six to go do, do the plumbing work. I did that for four years, got a somehow a full sale. Found out about me or something. I may have clicked on a link or responded to something back in the early two thousands. And, um, they kept hitting me up, come to school, come to school. I was like, you know what? Finally I was like, all right, I'm gonna, go to the full set. So I was like, all right, if I go to full sail, I'm going to take this serious and I'm going to make you know, like, I'm never doing plumbing again. I'm not going back to common. Ended up, I said if I go to full sail, I'm going to be Valedictorian. Not going here to make friends. I'm here to be the best I can be because I'm not coming back to being a plumber. I don't want to say in Alabama I don't like Alabama. So anyway, I left my plumbing work, moved down to full sail into the is a year program, end of the year, ended up becoming the Valedictorian, was given a speech at the end of the year to all my classmates. Moved back to Alabama right after that because I had a cousin that raft and I was like, alright, I can practice on him. You know what I mean? Recording. I went to a full sail for audio engineering, so moved back to Alabama. Did that. Anyway, I word kind of got around, you know what I mean? I knew what I was doing with pro tools, you know, who's kind of a new concept back then with recording with computers and you know, I was certified. My cousin had a link with the dirty boys. Is the rap group from Alabama, Montgomery, Alabama and my cousin had a link or had a connection with the manager, linked me up with them. I went and met with him. It just so happens they had just got a pro tool system and they had no idea how to run it. And I come in a week later, you know, white guy. Hey, I just graduated full sail top of my class. Total certified. I should. Yeah, because the guy like they thought they literally thought I was like FBI, like with defense or something like that because they're like, all right, this is kind of strange. We just got this in here. This guy walks in and out of nowhere, like protools certified. So it's Kinda like it was kind of Mitsubishi. I stayed in Montgomery. We're working with different artists and artists until about 2007. Kind of reached my peak with the Alabama, you know, I did everything that I wanted to accomplish in Montgomery and I felt it was time to move on to the next city or place that I could, you know, further my career. So Atlanta was that next place, had a guy that was already gone, like he knew some people in Atlanta, so I, I now moving up to Atlanta in 2007 since. But yeah, there's still other stuff involved for the story, but that's a crazy story in itself dealing with that guy. I mean, I don't want to name too many names, but uh, you know, basically when I originally moved back to Montgomery from full sail, you know, all the professors at full sail. We're like, don't go to the big city. They're oversaturated. Go back to where you're from. They'll use your talents more there, you know, you could be able to benefit, you know, your smaller city where it's less crowded with other people from full sail, you know, you'll be able to probably do more and accomplish more. So, you know, I went to Alabama but I wanted to do music as my job and yeah. So I started recording and basically the average nine to five person that's doing music is not going to have money to spend 35,$40 an hour on studios. So I ended up, the clientele that I ended up working with were a lot of guys that were entrepreneurs as I guess I'll say that. Street entrepreneurs. Yeah. That was my clientele and those were the type of characters and guys that I was around for a lot, a lot of time, a lot of our business. And uh, so anyway, when I moved to Atlanta I was working with the guy and we ended up falling out, but in, for a period of time around 2008 to 2009, I was back and forth and I met a guy by the name of empire mixed tapes. He had just moved down here from New York. He had done done stuff with, well a lot of people credit him with given little wayne his career because he was actually the guy or the Dj when little wayne was like, fuck the Djs. Or he was talking about my, my partner empire because empire released his Carter three CD before it came out on a mixtape. And that kind of started the whole panel knows. It's like a whole thing where unreleased music was being released of artists and, but it kind of helped give him wayne his buzz a little bit and there's an article that just came out, genius blog site called genius, but they credit my friend empire was kind of helping put wane over the top, but you know, whether or not you believe that or not, whatever it is you.
Speaker 2:So yeah. So my friend met him.
Speaker 3:He had the mixed meat game, the formula. He had contacts or stores of people that bought mixtape from him. So when he moved down to Atlanta and he wasn't doing that at the time he was doing more of management with artists and then I met him and we kind of linked up and he kind of saw my skill set and he was a. We were able to put together a mix tape the mix tape again and we started releasing mixed tapes around 2009, 2010. And we've been doing it ever since. I've just recently, I just bought them out recently. But um, yeah, so that's where I'm at now. But nothing. So about three or four years ago I was still recording and working with artists, Dj and mix cds for different artists.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'll tell you what really hooked me. I started listening to, to me, this guy's in his prime and I think he obviously disagrees with axes trying to move on, but I was listening to some of his music and man, I just connected with it outside, man. That one, I don't know what it was about that one. But go search, go search for this guide, check out some of his lesser known stuff. That's really good. But it's like, man, it's almost like listening to beck or pink floyd sometimes and then you have somebody rapping on the track. It's really, it's really different. I like it. That was the, the formula.
Speaker 3:When I first, you know, when I always wanted to make music, you know what I mean? I grew up in. I don't know, I'm not going to say I grew up with. I guess we're getting older, but yeah, there, there seemed to be more diverse music. When I was in high school, you had nirvana. You Accept Beck, beastie boys. But then you had to park, you had Nwa, you had public enemy. So I was influenced by a lot of different music. But I, you know, I love pink, I love back those artists that you name. But yeah, that's like my style that I was trying to do was a combination of hip hop and the alternative music. That was the formula that was gone with when I first started making it. And now I mean now it's kind of, it's been done so many times. It's Kinda like that's why I'm Kinda like Kinda just taking a little break, just seeing the direction of where the music industry goes and the styles and you know, and try to see if there's something I could bring this fresh, you know what I mean? But it Kinda got to a point where it was so monotonous being in a studio. It's like it felt like all the music, all the beats I was producing where this starting to sound the same and it was like the same formula and it got old and got and it got less. It wasn't as fun as when I first started doing it, but um, yeah, scraggly is the name that is that I went on there as an artist but also produced and engineered and, and I would go under the name grade a grade a music when I did that side of things, but as an artist when I tried to express himself, it was always scraggly. We'll put, yeah, well maybe we'll put some links to like outside or something. What's your suggestion? What's your favorite song you ever produced? I think I wouldn't say it's a favorite song. I think the best thing about stuffed out building is being able to work and be around artists and producers that are like superstar has now in seeing them and being around them before they were anybody. You know what I mean? When they were just just another guy, you know what I mean? And now to you know, like future or Waka Flocka or Mike will made it. Or let me see, Trinidad James, young thug, different artists like that. Having a chance to be around them before they blew up or before they were really who they are now and to see like how this is crazy. You know what I mean? It's not. Sometimes the most talented people don't make it in. Sometimes with people with no talent would just hustled. They know the ones that make it, but it's just, it's crazy around to be around people like you never know who's gonna be a superstar, who's going to be what? People will say, well why didn't you do this? Why don't you find you become future's engineer and stuff. It's like, well, you know, I was, I was being loyal to my situation but I know who I didn't know where he was going. Like you can't, you can't move like that. Like based on anticipation. Like kinda like I just stuck with the people and the guy that I was working with, empire mixed tapes and we kind of have like, we worked good together. So you know, I don't know grady, I have a two part question. One of it is based on all this experience and then your different opportunities to hang out with a variety of successful artists that are perceived as successful. Now,
Speaker 1:first of all, the first part is what do you consider success in music this day and age? And then the second part of this question is what advice do you have for that emerging artists or that person that wants to take this seriously? I mean, you mentioned the hustle and you mentioned you've seen some people that that had it, but that wasn't enough it. So let's start with the, uh, the first part, which is what do you think is success in music right now?
Speaker 3:Definitely in music, in the music business is making money at the end of the day. You know what I mean? You can like, you know, I had been y'all saying, Oh, I like your music. And it's like, that's cool, but like I can't pay my bills off. Like I need to monetize it somehow. And it's. And it's the deeper I got into the industry, I saw the different aspects of it that made me not want to be a part of it, killed my spirit as far as like being a star, you know what I mean? Because a lot of times we see these stars and think they're sensible, but it actually ality during a bad deal or this and that and they're probably not even happy and probably not even making the money that you think they're making, not making anything if anything. So it's like success for me is being, you know, being a consistent artists, making good music and being able to monetize and profit off of it and live comfortably off of it. That to me is success. And for younger artists they're trying to do, I just say, stay with it, stick with it. Follow your dreams. If you believe in it, you know, you gotta give it a 110 percent. Don't be afraid to fail. Uh, reach out to other artists in your area. Other successful artists are other successful. Whoever in your area pick their brain network and just work you kinda gotta put your all into it, man. Like literally sacrificed a family, you know what I mean? A friends. I wouldn't even consider myself successful. I mean I've been blessed recently would sell in these mixed tapes that I've been able to make some money and being able to save money. But as far as like, you know, multimillion dollar, you know, and just being able to take care of my family for generations. You know what I mean? That would be great. But you know, I'm not there yet, but that, you know, that's something to aim for that I would to know. How are artists making money these days? Streaming music, everybody's streams. You know what I mean? That's the thing. It's like streaming, you know, they just had their money. I mean if there's not a whole lot of money there though is they're actually. Artists are making their money from merchandise knows. That makes sense. Yeah. Let me take that back. Yeah. That's how I'm making them money through merchandising. So because the deals that they're signing with these labels to make them look bigger than life, the labels are going to get their cut first. They're going to get whatever they're owed and they're going to get that. Usually out of the streams are our album sales. But when artists, you know, hopefully the deal they signed, it allows them to make their money merchandise. When they do the tours and you know, live shows, you get, you get some money from shows and merchandise so that the merchandise in the shows is probably where the modern day artists is going to make most of the money. So you have to brand yourself. It's got to be all well rounded thing. You know what I mean? You can't just be one site, you can just make good music. You gotta have the brand and the look to go along with it that you can sell and monetize and sell t shirts and whatever. Whatever you may. Something about networking. I swear I don't think you can listen. You can't really listen to anybody talk about the career that they've built. Me included without network and coming up. To me that's a guy that's like the most important thing. You can't be afraid to reach out and the people, you can't be afraid to look dumb. You can't be afraid to ask questions because that's how you learn and what better to learn from somebody that's done it before you. You know what I mean? And that's why I work with old man. I only work with guys that are over 40 generally like agencies I work with. These guys are generally over 40. I don't, I don't like working with young folks very often. To be honest is a whole different world now. Like a lot of these kids, that's all they know is the internet and that they keep their face buried in the phone and they don't learn. They don't have that real world experience of dealing with people in real life. I don't know if it's. I don't know if it's that much different. I mean, can't you? Can't you do that through the phone now? I mean you can. I just don't think a lot of us older guys have necessarily figured them out yet and I think that's part of the problem, especially like for me, for example, like when I work with people and you're probably similar, we tend to work in like a comfort zone I think, but you've got to break out of that sometimes, but man, once you find that lane that works for you and you stay in it, that's where it's at. But the thing is, is that the younger kids, man, they do things so differently than we do, and I'll be the first to admit I've yet to 100 percent figured them out yet. No. Yeah, of course. Legacy. And that's, to me, that's how it always is. You know what I mean? The people, the older guys before us probably looked at us like, hey, this rap music, they didn't probably have rep when they, you know, people that were born in the fifties. And so it's like they don't let mama catch you watching like beavis and butthead. Man, that was a learning curve. So, but I'm open, I'm open to, you know, learn from the younger generation. I can't be hardheaded and say like, oh, I know everything and I've lived this long and I've seen it all now the young kid, I mean that's, they're the future. So I want to blockbusters and example of that. Okay. Blockbuster didn't pivot their business model and then took them out. You've got companies like toys r us that are out of business now because Amazon, right? I mean there's a post in my made Amazon doesn't own any stores. What was it? There was a uber. Uber doesn't own any cars. AIRBNB doesn't own any property. Stuff like that. Everything is networking. All they're doing is bringing people together. That's what they're doing. They just found a way to develop an APP that just makes it. So it is definitely, it's a crazy time, like supposedly the fastest technically advancements being made within the last 10, 20 years. History of human beings is definitely a crazy time. I think everybody's getting used to.
Speaker 4:When you think about Crypto
Speaker 3:crypto currency, you know, I've kept my eye on it and you know, I do trade a little bit, but I a, it's more like gambling penny stock. But um,
Speaker 2:I'm like that too. I like all coins, man. Like I'm, I'm mind and Xtl right now.
Speaker 3:I don't actually know enough about it and I've watched the whole bitcoin bubble and go up and burst and I just watched the whole thing, like I saw it was probably like a thousand dollars and was like, I'm not buying asked you drop back down to 300 and the next thing you know, it's almost kinda wish you to jump on that train early. Right?
Speaker 2:Man. I used to buy bitcoins to buy, uh, uh, when I first started out I was using themes on wordpress and I use bit coin to buy themes for wordpress because it was, you got a discount if you use been. I'm like, man, you know, you spent, when it was up to 20 grand, you're like, wow. I mean how much should I spend on themes? Was Twenty grand, was it 30 grand? What was it? If you just kept them, but bitcoins. Have y'all, are y'all familiar with the dark web? A little bit. A little bit. I try, you know,
Speaker 3:but supposedly I guess that's how they operate.
Speaker 2:No, that's like you got verge currency. Currency pushes. Well actually I don't think verge goes through the dark web. I don't know. Jared, do you know? I don't. I, I read about like the Silk Road and stuff like that, so I do have an interest in it. Oh there's definitely. Yeah. That's kind of where I'm telling you, man, if you look at Bitcoin or you look at any of the other like verge, they hooked up with a, an x triple x site, let's put it that way. And I think that what happens is as you see it kind of go from almost like sin, like it's almost connected to sin, but then after that adoption happen, happens there, it moves on and becomes more legitimate as money in different places. I guess that's what we'll see. But
Speaker 3:way, way off course. Sorry, I've got a couple of questions for you. Can we steer it back because that is everybody cool with that. That's so great. And we do have kind of have a time cap on this episode. We try to keep it. Just hit the 10 minute mark. Got The countdown right. So that, that being said, I want to have first ask Joe came up with this question. I love it. It's a, you've had a lot of crazy stuff that's happened to you and we love crazy stories. So what's one or two crazy stories that you could share with the podcast audience? Like when I was younger I loved the, I don't know, hallucinogenic drugs, me and my friends, we would and you know, have fun and stuff. But uh, I was going to the University of Alabama when I first, after I first graduated in my brothers, my older brother's roommate knew of a field where we'd go pick mushrooms and he showed me and I go there sometimes getting them. But anyway, the story is I was living in Virginia in the summer of[inaudible] 95 and I drove down to Alabama to get some mushrooms to pick some mushrooms. I don't know if it was like I was, I was going to go down there for a week and get mushrooms and come back in May. I was going to kill it, you know what I mean? I was going to make me a little bit of money and Blah, blah blah. So anyway, I go down. I didn't do none of that. The whole week I was like, parties is just living the life. The very last day I'm supposed to go back. I'm like, you know what, I didn't get any much. I need to get mushrooms. So I got up like 5:00 in the morning, went out, found this, pick these mushrooms, and started driving back to Virginia. I stopped my brother's in Tuscaloosa on the way back and then I continued to go driving. Anyway, by the time I get to Virginia, it's probably three or four in the morning the next day. You know what I mean? I'm driving. I haven't slept yet, so I'm starting to get sleepy and uh, yeah, I, I, I, those off, I doze off. Jesus take the wheel. He did because I actually hit. I woke up after like hitting the guard rail, like sliding, like bumping into the guard rail and I don't know where. I'm glad I hit a guard rail. I'm glad. Didn't hit a patch where there was no guard rail and who knows what could have happened to. That's about it. So I'm like, alright man, wake up, wake. That woke me up and you know, it wasn't. No, there wasn't a lot of damage to the car. So I have mushrooms drying on the floor of the car while all this was going on by the way. So 30 minutes later I doze off again on the other side of the road and I'll wake up in the media and like Google bouncing. So yeah, that's a crazy story in detail and then I'm glad that I made it.
Speaker 2:It sounds like our friend Jason driving through Atlanta, except for there's nothing. No psychedelics involved, just just, just as mine.
Speaker 3:Great. If you'd been in Atlanta then you, you might've ended up at grady, right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No and nothing. Nothing happened. I just like, it woke me up and I think after the second time I pulled off, got me a coke or some, some caffeine because I was still about to like an hour or two away from where I was going and yeah, that was, that was pretty wild. But yeah, a lot, a lot of, lot of drug use when I was younger I think I was just trying to find myself and I was lost and then, you know, I just didn't have any direction and using drugs was fun for me back then. But you know, as I got older it got in the way of what I was trying to accomplish. So I, I couldn't keep doing what I used to do.
Speaker 2:That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. When you got to focus, man, you know, I've, I've got a story pass, I'll probably won't lay it out here, but yeah, there, there does come a point where, at least for me it was like mine cloud always in the cloud. I started, man, I started finding that certain things that I should be paying attention to her I should be worried about. I wasn't because things I was doing and I said I've really got to start paying attention to the things that matter and man, when I had that mindset, boom, that's when it takes off. So. But I mean that's part of the growing up process. Crazy crap. When were kids. It was part of that is part of growing up.
Speaker 3:Great. As we start to wrap up here, there's two questions we like to ask. The first one is where can people connect with you online? Oh, well I'm Kinda, to be honest, I have a twitter and I have to explain this. I'm a twitter, facebook and instagram. Instagram. I don't follow anybody on engage. Anybody really? I post maybe once a month of our new cds we're working on and facebook is more of. I have a lot of family on the go all the way and express myself sometimes, but twitter on facebook is scraggly. Instagram is our a, G, g l e e s m for both facebook and instagram and on twitter it's great a music and that's where you normally I might say some. I might, you know, who knows what I'll say, I'll say anything you kinda like Kanye got. Yeah. I just kinda like get it out. Whatever's on my whatever I'm thinking I liked it and get it out in the open and put it out into the atmosphere because, I mean, I'm not out to hurt anybody's feelings, but I feel like the truth, I'd rather people know where I stand in, in that save us time, me dragging something on and not my feelings about something and wasting a month or two dealing with somebody when it could have been, you know, I could have saved all that time just by being myself and telling them exactly how I feel and letting them know type of person I am from the beginning and, but um, yeah man, it's something I'm working on just trying to be a better person every day. And I'm
Speaker 2:one thing you posted I, we'll say, what are we at three minutes to 59 charities got the countdown on us. No. One thing that I loved the other day that I saw was, and you may have to requote it because I may botch it here, I'm good at that, but it was something about thanking God for the things that you prayed for back in the day, if you will, and I remember specifically, you know, at one point going, please let this happen or please let that happen and then today you're looking at your bank account or you're paying your taxes and, and when you pay your taxes, you pay the same amount to the government that you used to actually make in an entire year and you're getting mad about that, but then you have to kind of step back and you go, man, praise God that I'm at that point where that's actually even something that is a problem for me. And I loved that one. That one really I think we should be so thankful for that
Speaker 3:we've been given. No, no doubt. I mean I'm learning and growing every day and to be honest, to be transparent as I can, like a lot. A lot of stuff that I do post is from stuff from other people that I find on twitter, you know what I mean? It May. It's something that means something to me that I feel like my friends can get something from so I just repost it. So a lot of those posts are actually my. And I tried to like let people know like you follow, follow these people on twitter. These are where I get a lot of my ideas but know, yeah, no, got to be thankful man. In the end of the day, God is in control and I do try to. I'm not necessarily a religious person, but I do consider myself a spiritual person and I try to, you know, be connected and be tied into what God wants for me and his wheel as much as possible. You know what I mean? I'm not perfect, but I'm always trying to get better every day. I'm always trying to do my best every day and to be honest, man, I'm an Alabama fan and I've been watching nick say you got to cut the interview. Who got a customer? Nah, I'm just kidding. No, I felt the Albourne vibes, you know, we can end on mixed haven, but no, like I'm a big sports fan and I like sports in life. There's a lot of lessons to be learned, you know what I mean? And I take a lot from, you know, I grew up playing sports, but I take, you know, I take a lot of his philosophies on just the approach of how the approach each day and try to get better every day and be the best that you can be and not worrying about other people do not know. Just focus on what you can do to be a better person and stuff like that. But yeah. Well said. That's an excellent final thought. Grady. We appreciate your time. Wish you the best. Joe. Thanks for cohosting. And uh hey guys, look forward to maybe doing this sometime. Hey Joe. Yeah, brother, catch you later. Thank you. Alright, see you. Jared.