This is som'n for the people on the Block To black out and rock to Give you what you need like Papa (who shot ya?) Hi, I'm Dave from Boyinaband, and I'm going to meet my childhood hero tomorrow. I'm heading down to London to meet Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park and I've been trying to think of something to compare this to in terms of excitement and... Linkin Park weren't just the band that got me listening to music they were the one that inspired me to start making it I joined a band so I could make music like they did, hence the name Boyinaband I got turn tables because I wanted to be as cool as Joe Hahn and then I started rapping so I could be even cooler like Mike Shinoda and I started screaming so I could be like Chester and now it's my carreer, so I've got quite a lot to be thankful to them for The next thing I've got to do after recording this is to pack my things and to take a train down to London with my sister, she's helping me with filming. Thanks Hannah! I've booked a hotel for the night so we can stay up late and prepare the final things for the interview 'cause its a really early start, and I do not want to be more stressed than I already am. Then after we make the plan for what to do, it's off to sleep and then getting up, heading down to the YouTube Space in London, and meeting Linkin Park Hey, we're at the youtube space,And apparently they just arrived "and I'm ah. ..I dunno, it's a weird thought to... it's weird, this is weird. I'm not prepared" "You meeting Chester at all?" "Yeah, yeah, this is...this is weird "This is weird, stop filming" "The woman's coming over, so I'm gonna assume that we're gonna go meet them" But you can come through to the green room "I'm Hannah"
"I'm Amy"
"Nice to meet you!"
"nice to meet you,Right? Come and take a seat." -Anxious!
Oh really? How come? Mike's like- the reason I started rapping so.. No way! That's awesome Is this all yours?
Yeah
Woow how have you been growing it? I don't want to mess this up I really don't want to mess this up and I can see myself messing it up the expression never meet your heroes exists for a reason. I'm not entirely sure what to expect "Hi!"
"Hi there, Mike"
"How are you?"
"I'm good" *Greeting eachother*
"Chester, Dave" "Hey, how are you?"
"That is Hannah" "it's fricken amazing to meet you" "you're....I know you did a... did a video about your hair, right?" "Yes, I did. Was that your first impression of me?"
M: "No no no I saw.. I saw your other videos" "I was frickin nervous as hell"
"There's, I mean.. you should be because we're, fucking, these horrible people" okay, Dave, from the future here. I couldn't believe how friendly they were. Like we were just chatting as if we were friends
"I wanted the whole video basically to be like meeting my childhood idols kind of thing-" *laughing* "that is so nice!" these guys got me into so many different types of music. They got me into metal and rap and electronica "You listen to rap too?" "Hell yeah!" "Did you always listen to both, or did you....?" "I initially hated music. I was really into science and stuff, then I found Gorillaz and then this band Linkin Park" "Then you realize that science and music are the same thing" "Do you pay attention to, like, your favorite like physicists and scientists and stuff like that?" "I've got a lot respect, mainly engineers and stuff" "Most of them...most of them have bands ..did you know that?"
"I didn't know that" ..made a song with a physicist. I knew that! I'm sorry Dr. Moriarty, my brain was not working at full capacity in that moment "What's so beautiful about music is you can either feel it and get it or you can go oh it's math!"
"Yeah!"
"When i'm writing something or I'm trying to like come up with a part, listening and using my ears and going with what feels good but I am also using the math a little bit, and I know other people, like our guitarist, Brad, he..he leans towards the like the logic of it. I used to make..make fun of him for it."
"Are you more the feeling side of it then?"
"If Brad is the math side, I'm all feeling"
"Gotcha..does that make it hard for you and Brad to write together then?"
"No. Because I don't really care what he's thinking about" I don't know if I'll have time to ask, but one of the things I wanted to talk about was how they got started. I love trying to figure out how bands made it and like, that puzzle is fascinating to me. "What else do you have on your mind? I feel like it's funny 'cause if you know all this..you said a couple things that tell me like, okay you know stuff about the band." "I've always wondered how you guys got exactly started. 'Cause on wikipedia it's like, yeah, you, Brad interned at Warner or something and then met someone and then you got signed and then all of a sudden you're ridiculously successful" "You're six guys in a band, so we had..and we were all at different schools so we had lots of friends to pull from" "Ah, gotcha" "So when we used to do a show we tell everybody 'hey we're having a party on Saturday night, if you want to come to the party come to our show beforehand you could only get into the party with a ticket from the show.' D: "that's freaking clever!"
M: "so, it's like Brad asked his boss Jeff, he's like: 'hey you should come down, my bands playing across the street after like after work tonight like come.. come watch us play.' The place is fucking packed. He comes in he's like 'Oh shit.. like this is a scene.. this is like this..This band has a massive following!' little did he know-"
C: "-We were giving free beer"
M: "-they were just our friends!" *laughter* D: "You tricked your way to getting signed?" M: "We didn't know- I literally didn't even know that's what his deal was- He made us a deal- made us an offer for a-" C: "a publishing deal"
M: "yeah, like that, the next day" D: "that's amazing!"
M: "and later I think he at some point he was mad-"
*laugh* Another thing I'm not so sure whether I'm gonna ask him or not I've got an idea for a skit that's kind of making fun of him- D: "I had something I wanted to to propose, if that's cool"
M:"okay!" D: "i was one of those kids that when you went to Minutes to Midnight and onwards that was initially kind of frustrated-"
M: "uh-huh" D:"Like, I was kind of person, sorry, but said things like..um.. 'Oh they should.. they should stick their old sound!'-"
M: "oh 'go back to the old thing'" D: "- but I think it's ridiculous to think that now obviously, like especially since I've done my own thing and started to realize how horrible is to be stuck to one feeling of music-"
C: "yeah"
D: "so I wanted to do a video kind of talking about that and then at the end that do a skit where I'm going to wander into the wilderness like racked with guilt-"
C&M:*laughter*
D: "-until I bump into Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, and I apologize profusely, and then I didn't know if it was funny, if you were like 'I don't accept the apology' or-"
M: *laughs*
D: "-or if you're just like 'wait, they say that?' 'they call us sellouts?' And then you just like cry- I don't know"
*laughter* M: "Okay let's really think about the the punch line at the end-" C: "it's like you apologizing and then a close up of Mike and he just got like tears running down his (face)-"
*laughter* D: "That's it!"
C: "-just like:" M: "ah, it's too much, hol- hold on, hold on" *laughter*
?: "Guess he's crying for real now" *laughter* *laughter* C: "You know, it's funny is like I actually just had a version of everything you just said someone asking like you know some people like to get mad at you guys when you do something that's so different, in their minds it's kind of like: I like water and, I like vodka, they look the same way like- But if I open up the water and I take a drink and it's vodka-" *imitates spitting*
D: "I've done that before"
C: "-and you spit it out. Now i've done that to the Deftones before" D: "(unintelligible?)" C: "I've replaced all their water with vodka, you could respond to it like Abe, which you start puking or you could respond to it like Chi which was- *imitates spitting* 'oh fuck yeah'."
*laughter* BEST. ANALOGY. EVER. Chester was hilarious in general like, Mike would be telling some story and going into quite a lot of depth and then Chester would interject with some like Dad Joke or whatever. After we chatted in the green room it was time for the actual interview. However it was going to be a little different to how I expected. I was expecting this to be like a private interview, like one-on-one, in a room like you see most interviews with celebrities and stuff like that. I didn't know I was going to be in front of an audience of Linkin Park's most hardcore fans whilst interviewing them. C: "You make me super nervous dude- -Cause like, you're a fucking big deal. You know what I mean? And I know that his interviews are gonna be smart and challenging and I'm- not that smart and I don't want to be challenged" Like I'd planned some in-jokes- 'Oh, like a little friendly in-joke that only Mike would get that'd be a nice way to start off light and friendly, you know' *SIGH* D: "The management kinda asked me to tailor this about rap so I wanted to start off by asking uhm- what's your favorite Homestar Runner episode, Mike?"
M: "Homestar Runner episode! Of course I mean whenever I talk about rap related things in my life the first thing- I mean did you guys- Do any of you even know what homestar runner-"
D:"Do you guys know homestar runner?" No one in the crowd knew about homestar runner!- You probably don't know about homestar runner! At least they liked it C: "homestar runner is the jam!" D: "It's an Internet cartoon that Mike posted on his non blog a long time ago and I found it through Mike." M: "You were like-"
C: "It's Strongbad right?" D: "I was proper stalker type fan, back in the day" M: "You would have to be if you saw the homestar runner stuff that i posted, for sure" D: "So do you wanna answer the question?"
*laughter* M: "What was your favourite?" D: "It was probably the deathmetal strongbad email"
M: "oh yeah that was a good one" C: "I just like his voice like 'tuhday were goin to be talking about-" "That's right!"
*laughter* "-about dee movie the Kong Skull Island" D: "i dont know if you realize how much you're making my life right now-" M: "That is EXACTLY like the thing" I wonder how much he knows about youtube in general maybe I'll ask him about that! oh it's at the YouTube space! It'd be appropriate D: "One of those unexpected things that happened recently when seeing you tweet that PewDiePie was troll goals-"
M: "troll goals. yes." D: "So youre a fan of pewdiepie?" M: "I am a fan of trolling" D: "*laughter* Okay" M: "Trolling. And his- that was- Olympic level" D: "Do you guys watch much YouTube" M: "Yeah, a lil' bit, a lil bit"
D: "who do you watch?" C: "Yeah it's like a new thing right?" *laughter*
M: "The Youtubes! Yeah! I just heard about youtubes! I watched a little bit i mean some of you know more more- like you know we really well-known stuff like pewdiepie and nigahiga -elliot- rhettandlink-" C: "and like Linkin Park"
M: "oh! my- my wife is an author and she got me into John Green" D: "Niice!"
M: "what was it? vlog brothers They're so funny and they're so smart! is that's the thing D: "I love their stuff"
M: "yeah really great" D: That's awesome, I had no idea you guys knew- M: I don't know if I would categorize- be a nerdfighter per se but I do like their- PewDiePie makes fun of Linkin Park though, I gotta address that, i can't just like gloss over the fact that some of their stuff has become like a meme. I got to figure out how to say this stuff without coming across like an ass. A lot of the youtubers like PewDiePie for instance make fun of linkin park songs.
M: good C: perfect
M: as they should
D: what do you guys think of the kind of the meme kind of culture that's propped up around this?
M: They're just lucky we don't make one of them i love C: I love it because- C: Here's the thing, I mean-
D: You'd roast them! C: It's like an honor to be made fun of, to a certain degree, because it's like like we've reached that level of pop, we're in the Zeitgeist We're in the Zeitgeist! I love that our music has impacted people on a level where, one they feel comfortable enough to like, you know, kind of have fun with it, and also after like- what is it like 17 years 18 years of doing this together that like people like people still find it like interesting enough to talk- to talk about us and sing about our music Mike was the guy who inspired me become a producer like he was the reason I got- he was the reason I bought this and I played hundreds of gigs with it even though all the other bands had laptops I wanted to be like Linkin Park I wonder if I'll get a chance to ask him any music nerdy type questions. I want to bring this It's too heavy.
C: "mike is extremely prolific like this dude writes music all the time we're on the flight over here like from from united states for example i'm playing field runners and watching movies and sleeping. This dude is on his computer with his machine out like making music the whole time and it's been this way for... ever you know we'll sit down we'll listen through like 50 demos you know, 49 of them that Mike wrote, then one that I hummed into my phone and then I'll pick the ones that we liked the most. [sick beat plays on phone]
D: Exclusive! C: Like, he just does this all day.
M: This one, this was like the most basic first thing i did that ended up being lost in the echo so the sounds were recorded from my phone I played a little kids keyboard and did this and recorded it into my phone and then I have these: [chiming techno] D: That's so cool!
M: You hear, like your parents say I had to walk uphill both ways to get to the grocery store in the snow, dadadada- it's like that's true- that- the music version of that is true like I had to- I had my first sampler didn't have a sequencer on it I have it sit there, you know what I did? in order to make a snare repeat because it didn't- you couldn't place it on a sequencer and press play and it would just keep playing itself it only operated by numbers like milliseconds so I'd be like basically sample a snare and then leave silence and then clip it and loop it, it would loop back on itself *psh* ... *psh* And if it was 1200 seconds, and I knew I wanted a hi-hat to be like twice- happened twice as often, then that would be six.
D: That's such a faff! C: That was crazy.
M: I had a calculator next to my sampler. And I'm sitting there doing that...
(D: I should probably ask for some advice, 'cause-) *sigh* Oh my god, like they're HUGE! They're fricken' ridiculously massive. I didn't realize the scale of how big they were until I prepared for this interview. Did you know that you are the 36th biggest facebook page in the world?
C: That's huge!
M: Who are we ahead of? D: I was going to say, follow that with making you the third biggest rapper in the world. Could you guess the other two?
C: Jay-Z.
D: No. M: Drake...
D: No.
M: Drake is not ahead of us then? Eminem? D: Yes,
M: Um...
D: If you want a clue, I can give you a clue. M: Kendrick? I wish Kendrick was.
D: Nope.
Audience: Kanye. C: Nope it's not Kanye.
D: Hoo hoo, ha ha. M: What is that?
Audience: Will Smith! D: Will Smith, I'm not very good.
*laughter*
C: WILL SMITH! M: That's funny because I'm- I probably sit squarely and stylistically, I could sit squarely in between Eminem and Will Smith.
*laughter* M: I'm not as technical as Em, and I'm not as funny as Will.
*laughter* D: And also you are the biggest band in the world, ahead of the Beatles. C: Everybody knows that.
M: I mean, come on.
D: Why do you think you guys are so phenomenally much bigger than the other bands as well? Because Green Day was like half the size, and they were like the next one down. M: Oh, that's on Facebook. Okay.
C: Because our fanbase is so smart. *laughter* C: I don't know if you could ever figure out exactly what we did to become- I guess what you're saying that we are. You know, all we've ever really done Is just, one, we've always paid attention to our fans, and we really appreciate them. You know, early on, the only extraordinary thing we did was like, we would until we were literally begged by like, our stage managers and our production managers and our tour managers, and also the venues themselves were like, "Please stop signing everything for everyone," like "You have to leave." And then we get the bill, we're like "yeah we should we should probably stop doing that," you know? It's like $1000 a minute, we were over like, we have to leave, for real. And so, really appreciated our fanbase, we knew that we only had so much music out. I think our hybrid theory was like 35 minutes long, or something like that. There was only so much stuff, and we wanted to keep supplying them with more stuff, we're like, "Okay, let's do reanimation, let's make webisodes." I think, like we were talking about, like we may have actually, being one of the first people, or the first anything, to like coin the phrase "webisode," 'cause there was no social media,
D: Yeah, LPtv stuff. C: There was no YouTube, or any, you know, I mean, there wasn't even like, a great search engine. You'd have a hard time finding things. And it was all through LinkinPark.com, naturally I think our fans kind of were used to that, you know, digesting things from us in that way, so as Facebook came along, and as YouTube came along, we were already there. You know, and we just kind of integrated seamlessly into it, as opposed to being like, "Oh, look at what's happening over here, let's figure out what- how to get into that, how to tap into it," like that kind of thing.
D: Yeah. C: We were already- Part of our DNA. Yeah.
D: You were ahead of the game. D: That's really interesting to see. So it's potentially just that you were that communicative with your fans that it worked out.
C: I think so. D: I thought about what Chester said here a lot. Like when I used to go on tour, I was always talking to fans after the shows as well. And Linkin Park did it after the interview, like, talking to all the fans that were there. I've been thinking like how can I kind of implement that into my life now because I'm not touring in the moment so I came to two conclusions: first, I'm going to seriously start pursuing touring after this, it's really lit a fire under me and second I want to try live streaming after I release videos because I feel like that's kind of the online equivalent to see if as the same kind of feel is talking after a show. Follow me on twitter if you want to keep up to date with that. I want to think of an excuse for how to explain how much of a hardcore fan I am. I had this one idea that might work that would kind of be a prank but I don't know if I have the guts to do it in the moment. You already know how much it would impact you had on my rapping. I wondered if you could give me some feedback and some lyrics I wrote. M: Oh yes.
C: Yes please! [silence] M: I love it! So far so good. D: Spit drips from the jaw, the witless witness cryptic colloquialism shifts your midriff, dark, all I do and bark, the shadows evolve with my thought catalog and a long wrapped candle log. Do you want to explain why you're laughing? M: Those were my lyrics.
D: How old were those lyrics, Mike? M: Almost 20 years old. My old stuff was like, I mean, YOU know. I was on that really, it was almost more about the pattern and the rhyme structure than it was saying it.
D: The words, yeah. D: To clarify, those lyrics were from a song WAY before their first album, which I memorized like, 15 years ago, when I was learning to rap. So that was pretty cool.
M: I grew up in an area where it was really diverse. My friends from- who were living like downtown in LA, like where a lot of the hip hop stuff was coming from, like they were the ones who introduced it to me. And I went "Wow, what is this?" You know, 'cause I was listening to like Bon Jovi. D: *laugh* So that's where you got your lyrical ideas from.
M: It was, yeah, it was a mixture of Bon Jovi and NWA. *laughter* M: Which is basically Linkin Park.
D: Yeah, I was gonna say.
M: It's NWA meets Bon Jovi, right? Isn't that what it is? D: I really wanna rap with him though. If I could technically have collaborated with Linkin Park, that would be Life Goal Achieved. D: So you guys did a track with Busta a while back?
M: Yes we did.
D: So does that mean you're a fan of fast rap? C: Yeah!
M: Sure.
D: Can you see where I'm gonna go with this?
M: No, I have no idea. D: Can you Fast Rap for us tonight? Right now.
M: Can I-? Tonight? Right now.
D: If you don't want to, we can cut this out and no one will know. M: Like what-? I feel like you have something in mind.
D: I have nothing in mind.
M: Nothing in mind? M: What was the one-? Did you hear the Fort Minor stuff? I had like a B-side that was pretty fast, it was like, "I'm in dangerous bitch, y'all can't ride and hang with us ni's,
D&M: Everybody so 'fraid of us, shit. Hang it up and quit, the things you heard before"
M: Yeah, it's like, you forget the first couple lines of it. C: nmm- BEFORE!
M: That was like one of my fasts. D: Would you do "Not" Fast Rap with me, if I beatboxed? M: "If you beatbox?!" D: Again, we can totally cut this out, there is no pressure whatsoever. M: The verse I loved to do, you know that one I always do, it goes, um, "This is something for your people on the block to blackout-"
D: *beatbox* Pff Pff tk pff tktk *laughter*
M: Hold on.
D: *keeps beatboxing* M: I'll do it. "This is something for the people on the block to black out and rock to, Give ya what'cha need like Papa,
C&M: "Who shot'cha?" M: "Separate the weak from the option, beat beat, take hard from a-" *laughs* M: It's the beat! The beat was so great, it was so sweet, it was so sweet. I love that, actually. C: I was like, "Dude, what? Is Justin Timberlake over here? Like..." M: Okay, now your turn. *beatboxes* Pw Tpabuctateh D: "Spit drips from the jaw of the witless witness, cryptic colloquialism shifts your midriff. Dark, all I do, and bark, the shadows evolve with my thought catalog, and a long wrapped candle log. Keep your distance, and if you're resistant, turned by persistence, the twistedness of tangled life has strangled my hope to wasting 'em and tasting 'em. Forced to face these hate crimes against the state. Do you feel it? The weightlessness? First in between the ceiling, reeling around the room, Riding the bubble of soundproof. If the frequency pick a new shack, shake with every move. Involuntary muscle contraction, ignore it, drink it in, musical gas filled euphoria, the sound counts to make the dead flush. Have you a head rush? 'Cause red thoughts had said stuff." *applause* M: You were much, wait- The whole thing about that was, he was much more prepared to do that. (D: So, in conclusion, I rapped with Linkin Park.) I have no more goals in life. This was fricken brilliant. One of the best days of my life. I messed up a few times. One of the big questions I wanted to ask was, how to stop being a perfectionist, 'cause I feel like Mike has a similar kind of perfectionism as me. I wanted to get his advice on that. If you're watching, Mike, I'd love to know. I also feel kind of bad that I didn't really talk much about their new album, and that was like the whole point of me being there. Um... Go check it out now! There we go. Yeah, in the moment, I was just lost in conversation. I guess that's probably like the better way to go, like I had a genuine friendly conversation with my- With the people that inspired me to make music. That's probably the best thing I could've expected really. So thanks, Mike and Chester. When Mike had to leave, to go into another interview he shook my hand and this might sound really cheesy but he was like, he congratulated me on all my success and it really hit me because it felt like a proper full-circle Overall this is just one of the best days of my life. I don't know how to end this so here's some extra out-of-context footage: C: AY! Shut the fuck up out there!
M: Then I click on Safari, like a fucking idiot.
C: I like Ice T. M: He's not like a 10, you know, he's like an 8. And Brad is like a 4. C: ... um ... [DOOR OPENS LOUDLY] M: When one person is touched by it, then it was worth it. You know who that one person is? ME! C: I hear that new Taylor Swift album's fuckin' dope! Licking the pavement, and then, ballsacks. M: Does your channel have a rating?
D: Of course I do not.
C: There's probably some fantastic ballsacks out there, when you mix it with pavement, I'm not gonna like it. D&C: Boom!
M: Fucking morons.
C: Fuck this motherfucker, I'll... kill his children. M: Are you rolling?!
I got nervous FOR him and im thousands of miles away....damn.
The last seconds killed me xD
Really nice and funny video.I like how Mike is so humble about his skills on rapping
I love this video, and this shows me once again why these guys are so amazing! some other famous musicians think they're kings & above everyone but LP act like normal dudes you meet in the street :)
That was awesome!