MC Serch talks JAY-Z, Nas, His Beef with MC Hammer, New Rappers, Weed & More | Drink Champs

[Music] yes we kill us [Music] what it give me hopefully this is your boy n.o.r.e what up it's dj efn and this drink chess [ __ ] crazy [Music] right now when you're looking at drink champs and you say where we started this show for we said we wanted to have a show that we you know salute our legends and salute them now not to salute them when they end the coffin and all this and when you look at this brother that's to the left of me not only is he a queen's legend he's a new york city legend not only he has stood by the culture and put the culture on his back in many different scenarios i remember he even had a daytime talk show i was watching that too he was like the jenny jones and he kept me hip-hop he kept it hip-hop he was how the suits are but he kept it hip-hop he's a part of a legendary group one of my favorite songs of all time is getting the gas face you're part of that he later on went to have a solo career and then had success putting on one of arguably the best emcees of all times after that he went on him started doing radio heard he got a podcast coming up there books all type of crazy [ __ ] hustling even white rapper shows had to do with everything i can keep going so in case the people don't know what i'm talking about we're talking about the [ __ ] mc [ __ ] you are truly an all-around hustler hey when you from far rockaway queens you only got to do it god damn it gotta get it you got to get it how you get it you know but um i owe you what uh flowers uh because i'm able to do my podcast because it's just success that you've had here so we're able to you know create you know the timeless podcast company because of the successful feedback yeah well that's a beautiful thing let's make some noise for that once again we know you ain't drinking the search is how we do um i mean what's the bottle do you prefer i drink um this is i'm saying i see that um i think you should go with the rose rose everybody picks jose everybody okay we're gonna be so let's let's take it from the beginning right the beginning when hip-hop first came on the scene um you started out as a third base is that where no no no i was i was a solo battle emcee yeah so when i um when i was coming up um you know it was it was just so you got to imagine taking the a train from far rockaway to when i went to high school uh music and art on a 135th of convention i'm not saying oh man okay yeah yeah so my favorite group that i heard in the street on those cassette tapes there's a group called the kango crew 4mcs they had little skits that they would do around like uptown and all of that hillbilly girl indian girl like funny [ __ ] and um it was you know four dudes and i went to my first day at high school and i went to the lunchroom and i see the cipher in the lunchroom i need regular cups yeah i ain't giving me no regular cups we missed mr lee let me get a regular cup yeah high school and um i see these dudes rhyming around the lunch table so i go stand on the lunch table and i see these four dudes and they're doing the routine right and then they got all the matching colored kangaroos they got the latino shirts that was that of that right 19 right 80. right and the dude that was next to me was like we had a big brother big sister program where a freshman and a senior would walk you around a school so my man steve bosco may rest in peace i turned to him and i said yo they joined the kango crew and he said [ __ ] that is the kangol crew and it was impersonating okay because i've never seen rappers in person and all i heard was these fourth and fifth generation cassette tapes i never seen them in person i just knew the dude's names were you starstruck please man i never seen a star in my life like that big and um it was a guy named ricky d right who became slick rick it was dana dane who became send a fella day in the day and their homeboys lance romance and omega and what was the candle crew yeah that was a kangaroo okay and then right and then they stopped doing that and then all of a sudden his dude beat boxes and his name is dougie fresh right and they started doing this record called la di daddy that i've never heard before you're witnessing history right now so i knew all the words to lottie dottie before a lady daddy ever came out in 85. and this is a fact though i'ma tell you i was so enamored with it that when i went back around my way i knew nobody heard it so i started saying them rhymes like they were mine right to impress girls so 85 record comes out and i'm at mcdonald's and lindbergh coming out of hot skates and the record comes on red alert plays it because you know kiss fm they had the mid you know shows friday saturday night and the girl that was dating this dominican chick who would hook me up with free big macs was was at the counter and she goes oh oh oh [ __ ] there's ricky d dominican always got the hook up and the dude behind me goes my [ __ ] hey ricky d this blows up my spot so boogie but it was that indoctrination right and watching the dudes like right next to him was this dude jay cool and jay cool and his brother formed the fresh emcees and before i left high school i'm hearing f-r-e-s-a fresh fresh fresh yo that's fresh pumpkin and all-stars you know i was having um oc and crazy eddie were coming to my school dating this girl in the show they were they had a bracket called problems in the world today like so i'm like 17 years old and i'm like damn like i can do this and my man mathematics and understanding we're like no you can watch it you can't be a part of this you're a white boy you're a devil you could you could okay so i actually graduated high school with mark pitts changing faces yeah so so i knew i could do it like i knew i could do it but i wasn't really allowed to do it so i was just a battle embassy so basically my man math and my man on standing would have me battle all through like the five boroughs right and they were moving their little thing things right right so they would go to like the flat top right right there not yet i had a jupiter um so what they would do is because one of the things i learned early on was like when when people started battle ramen they all had pre-prepared rhymes right nobody was rhyming off top of their head so i'm like so i'm like yo that's going to be my thing right like i'm i'm a freestyle i'm going to be i'm going to come off top of my head and be just as good and better right better [ __ ] good better because i have to be ten times better because i'm the only [ __ ] white boy out the only other white people you saw at the park james was the police i was the only white boy you said the police yeah so they would set up these battles for me and i would show up at the you know these little jams or whatever right and as soon as i came up to subway steps whatever little money was being bet as soon as they were like oh that's mc search the money would triple wow like oh yeah oh no we got him we got him got him guys right hold on hold on is this the one that's like white man can't jump devil can't let's describe this era this era is heavily infused by a culture of five percent which was which so i don't want people to think like that that was just it was just at that time no it was at that time listen it was a black art form and there was no the only white boy ever saw ron ever was this kid lord scotch aka blake um who now writes keel like he was the first white rapper i ever saw so i would come up the steps and then the numbers would triple and they would be like oh oh oh that starts oh 100 200 300 right so they'd be deciphered and these dudes would start beating beat boxing and rhyming for the dude in the project so whoever vandermeer wherever wherever they were from and they would battle me but there was all pre-written rhymes right so i it was usually always two rounds it never went three it was always two rounds so the first round whatever to do said to me i i went over my head i would just break them down head to the toe i would just i would just like look at what they were wearing i would see what they were wearing and i would clown them right now is my first move on the freestyle freestyle off the top was there pre-written for you were they so you're already ahead of them right and not only that the other thing that was crazy was because i went to a music school when they tried to do the beatbox i'd be like no no i'm gonna go acapella and they'd be like yo you what do you mean you're going to acapulco what the [ __ ] are you talking about right i'm like i don't need no beat i don't know acapella right so i would rhyme just off top my head with no beat so now you know now you got me saying [ __ ] about what you're wearing and now all their boys are like oh this is a problem right and mind you i'm about to train like i'm right by the train so the battle's happening right by the train so the second round the dude is now shook always shook right and now the second round comes in nobody didn't want to lose the white kid neither though definitely don't want that to happen but now they want to take the battle nobody could win but then they in the battle but then the other thing the temperature's going up because now to all the stick up kids are like whatever he gets we're gonna get it back anyway right so that's that's the heat that's you got to imagine the temperature's not going up right that's real right um so now the second one whatever he says to me i'm taking all his words against him i'm like oh you said this but you should have said this so now i'm gonna turn around and make it a diss and dismiss everything you just said right and now they're like you know how that goes my man so they would then pass the money to me and as soon as i got the money i would dip back to the train before the stick-up happened so i would top the train and i was going but just one way on it right yeah no we had and my boys were smart like that like they thought about it at the time we were like you know this is gonna be a problem and they weren't gonna [ __ ] with my two boys because then they would [ __ ] up the train right like they didn't want the money to stop so it was what it was so this one this one time i'm laughing but it's nothing funny this one time so my by like so this happened like 1984 85 by 86 87 i'm a beast like i'm like yeah i got my 10 000 hours plus another ten right we do this one battle my man my man reggie reg is djing a party in brooklyn right and i'm battling this latin to the spanish kid right i think i might have been zooted at the time like i might have been smoking rulers at the i'm on my way to latin quarter okay so like it's a friday night i'm gonna get my money right i'm gonna go you know and my man was djing in a park jam there anyway so i'm like alright cool so this dude is latin dude he already has an attitude and i'm already kind of it's already known that there's this white kid mcsearch and he's doing his thing whatever so the duke battles me typical style he got his written and i break him and i mean i broke him to the point where his own girl is like trying to pass me the math right like so his face is now screwed he got the screw face look at him he don't even want to kick a second verse but he kicks his second verse and when he kicks his second verse i could see where his building was and where his mom was and his mom calls to him in the middle of the verse like blahblahblah.com and he pulls out a pack of newports to smoke a newport and i said yo it's it's coincidental that your mom's calling you and you're picking out that newport because i'm a smoker and before you say anything else right and this dude's face got crate like i've never seen a dude face get like like right so now so now that dip happens the dip happens i get the money i did right it was a big collection it was like it was a lot of money go to last quarter hang out paradise you know the whole thing you must have been four at the time four or five years so i go to the land quarter i come back i'm helping i've never been to the original land quarter i've been to the one that comes right down five times yeah yeah yeah so i come back i'm helping my man break down his set and at the time and you'll remember this as a dj you guys carrots crates not even crates so it's like four or five o'clock in the morning it might have been four o'clock in the morning and um my man said something to me i turn my head i hear a pop and the and the amp breaks in my hand and he's like yo what the [ __ ] you did i'm like the [ __ ] you mean i did and i looked and as soon as i looked the dude's cracking back to 25 to shoot me a second time wow so i'm like oh spot for dip right to the train gone and i never bowed in the projects again wow and i realized that i was a beast like that at that moment the fear and the adrenaline right it manifested into something else it manifested into the fact that i was a beast right like if somebody wanted to kill me they wanted to get rid of you right so let me be back a little bit you worked in detroit radio correct this is way later though i'm just bouncing around so being that detroit radio and detroit related to eminem when you watch the eight mile i know i'm bouncing around on little bit did you look at that and say man because that's like you know you don't describe in the first eight mile and you know and let's pick up you know because trick tricks out in your your same position that's that's my man but we didn't know hip hop was acting like that in detroit like we didn't know it like that we knew it in like the hip-hop show it was really like i jumped from back to like new york was really so did you look at eminem's story and say at first is this like a little cop similarities i met um no i met him when he was signed to john schechter's label game records so i heard that verse evil way before i was ever in detroit the infinite that that was right right so when i heard um that's why i was even sorry for jury no way before way before and this before he was down to the kids in jersey way before that and his first first he sounded like nas and jay-z like a combination i think i heard people say he sounded like that too like he had all those influences you have to understand his biggest influence marshall's biggest influence was kane like that's his favorite emcee so it makes sense right mm-hmm um but when i heard that verse even like i used to call it marshall i like that you know [Music] but one of the things when i went to detroit um i called paul and i called em yeah i see paul as your man even i was just watching some interviews and researching up on you when you thought about doing your book one of the first people you called was paul okay cool well paul was heavy and as a lawyer repping a lot of people in new york before corey m got put on correct a lot of the underground yeah he was also an emcee but he was wait he was an mca he was and he was raucous lawyer no you know not a rocket but a lawyer for a lot of those mc's like the backpack era the guy who designed our logo scam get out of here he reps him and that's how scam has a song with them in them wow okay paul i didn't know that my bad i owe you some more respect all right my bad so um i called paul and i said look i'm gonna come to detroit what do you think and he's like do it he didn't even hesitate he's like do it the city will show you so much love and um m really showed me a lot of love like because at the time him and the station i was working at jlb didn't see eye to eye wow but when 50 came into detroit during the g unit right we did a five-day special with 50 like when m would drop something he would come to me first like when m had the benzeno beef he came to me first like he really really really showed me a lot of love and when we did the hip-hop summit with uh with russell wow i mean 13 000 people to come here rappers not rap to talk about economic independence right nori spent 25 minutes talking about investments in property talking about long-term investments and stocks and bonds and also protecting his royalties through his lawyer and through his management and that was the two most important things for him to make sure that he had proper when he was getting ready to start to invest right right so that's two thousand three or six right the only time eminem ever in life is that time in detroit hip-hop summers the only time and he was so like it was amazing like to see nasir to see m to see nori and you know and the truth was i mean russell dougie fresh um there was a lot of people there let me bounce around because you just gave me the alley yeah let me go no no no i'm gonna give you guys there's gonna be plenty of problem i hope you i read somewhere that you had a choice between oc and nas to sign then i was at the same time no no i signed both choice yeah it wasn't a choice yeah i know you signed them both okay but at one point didn't you sign oc first i did sign rc first and he was an original black back to the gorilla grant yeah there's a remix and there's witness where he no no no no okay so this is no so oc was already signed the searchlight he had fudge pudge out you know i i love that that verse is one of the greatest verses to me two of the greatest verses in the early 90s is obviously live at the bar became a fudge clutch okay let me ask you something yes sir make sure we go go back to our question lavender barbecue came out first yes sir okay all right cool this is your story yeah all right let's not debate him he's debating i don't know i don't like to google sometimes i got the guy right here i'm gonna ask him yeah [ __ ] googling i'm sorry no so when i met manch and i met poe and i was like yo i gotta sign oh i gotta sign him um which organized confusion all right organize i'm sorry organized confusion i'm talking like and then um i was in the studio working on my solo album and percy p the riddler oh nas came into the studio with my man rob tulo reef daddy free and stretch and they all came in and we were gonna do back to the grill regardless back there really that was going to happen with father um and everybody did a ver oh and nakanelli was there too sorry pardon me left right we're in the building wait live at the barbecue it already came out right okay there's a play off of that off of that song no no no no no no this is now when i'm doing my solo album in 1993. this is like three years later right but it's not playing a lot of the bar because it's like 90 is the same thing because live yeah so that's that's what oc was on right no no no no no no no kick him in the ground was chubb rock chubb rubble okay i that was my back to the ground again kick him and got it because when we did shows that was one of the biggest like when we did kick him on the grill on tour like everybody loved that record so i was like [ __ ] it i'm gonna do back to the grill again but i'm gonna have other people on it and red hot leviton was already my man like so i he was in the lab anyway he wanted me to manage him as an artist not as when i was giving me hip hop chills right now when i was when i was in the senior vp when i was at wild pitch and i brought oh one of the records that was already there was third eye and there's a record with jessica jess west that we had called put your boots on right let me tell you something i was so [ __ ] happy to be a wild pitch because i had oc i had jess west i had cool keefe i had large professor and i was just about to put out ill-matic like i was about to be the hottest one way too fast right now it's like you're drinking you eat drinking so yeah that's why that's why that's what i like drinking that's why i don't smoke because my mom goes so we go so we're doing back to the grill again all all those dudes come in nah stays behind everybody announces ah tells me he's like yo i'm about to sign my deal warner brothers i'm not sure i can be on this single i'm a rhyme anyway but i'm not sure i can be on it percy piano riddle they also said they have deals they didn't know if they could be on it always down with me so it was gonna happen all right so not stays behind and when everybody leaves nas tells me like he got this deal he don't feel right about and he wanted me to take a look at it and i said i can't it'll i can't like it's legally illegally i can't do it i said but if you sign a searchlight i can help you he goes what does that mean i said it's simple it's a one page agreement you sign a searchlight production deal production deal i'll furnish the album i said i won't take any money i won't take any advance i'll make sure you get the best deal in the world and then on your publishing i won't take any publishing i'll take a 5 admin fee which means i'll help the publisher administer your publishing to make sure people don't use your [ __ ] in the wrong way so you're taken care of and you'll keep all your [ __ ] right and there's a one-page agreement he goes i gotta think about it because he's 17 years old so he's like so i was like oh he's never coming back he's not it's like even i knew like in 93 he's going to be the greatest mc of our of all time and you know this over one verse off of one verse and that one verse one credit said laugh at the barbecue let me put it this way okay when i heard cnn's first album right here no no no [ __ ] you i need you i need you to hear this i need you to hear this i need you to hear me when i heard the war report yes and i got a call from neil levine to work what i did it for free that's like that i worked that right there it's free we'll give you a flower you know what i'm saying sorry it's too great so the next let's go back let's go the next day i'm in the studio working on back to the grill again okay nah shows up with jungle best brother yes that's right they throw four blunts on the table and he says explain this to me so i said this is how it can this is how it's gonna work this is how it goes down i'm gonna shop your deal i'm gonna go back to you know those guys i'm gonna make sure that they do the right thing if that's where you want to be but if they don't renew faith this is before faith this is stretch armstrong and rob and reef at bigby who offered him the deal first that's the deal he felt funny about i ain't noticed that big beat yeah right i ain't gonna lie you scooted me right now that's why i knew to get you stay right here i got my seatbelts who's that big beat at the time just to understand that eric is that stretched by beetle you said or stretched but it doesn't stretch exactly okay i wanted the best shape craig cowman was the head of bigby it was his labels he's not atlantic he's not at warner craig calvin it's a part of the atlantic system okay go ahead but he is he's got his own imprint okay he put out the double x posse he was putting out the artifacts with reef who would sign those groups and they were going to sign nas okay so we we we just get to smoking and chilling okay and then he says you know what i'ma [ __ ] with you signs the paper the next day i go to a reef and stretch and i said guys the deal you offered him is the same deal that i signed in 1988 it's not it's not a good deal it's he's the greatest emcee of all time you you don't even need to hear anything else right and reef and stretch fell some type of way about it and i and i understand that they're like yo why are you getting involved and i said look he he asked me for my help when you guys left he asked me for my help i saw the deal it's the same deal that i [ __ ] signed to def jam in 88 which to this day in 2021 i've never seen a check i've never seen a royalty statement i've never seen publishing i never got [ __ ] from [ __ ] left-hand records i mean jeff jam records right wow so i said i can't let him sign this deal just tell just make the deal right they said well how do you make the deal right i said remove the publishing when i if you want to sign this publishing that's a separate deal bump this up bump that up i stayed there for about five hours because they were my man there's my friends right and finally craig cameron through those guys said we're not changing the deal ping out i went to russell next move i went to his apartment on fourth and broke i heard this russell says to me he sounds like g-rap and g-rap don't sell no records so i'm not interested gone i went to columbia and i went to faith faith didn't let me leave he signed an amazing deal and then once i left that deal i went to zomba publishing because i had a great relationship with richard blackstone who was the head and zombie is um just correct me if i'm wrong isn't that jive it's right so job is the record label like one and one chapter yes sir okay i went to them and they said how many songs are you gonna have on the album i said probably 12. right he said well you know he's only get paid on 10. i said okay fine but that was standard right i was standing they gave me a check for nozzle i went to the 40 side one thing nas said to me i said what do you want he said all i want is to get my mother out the project he said if you can help me get my mother out the projects we could i went to see him with two checks for 300 000 i said move your mob out to projects wow and nomadic was was born from that day made the library of converts yeah all right so now you get the chat right you guys you get the check all right now how does the actual making of illmatic start because when we google you they credit you for executive producer l matters and it was written correct all right so let's just stay on so so it was really simple my my role was really simple make everything easy for nas all i i obviously i could not help him make a record like that's [ __ ] ridiculous right right it's like a blind man helping picasso it wasn't going to happen right so all i know i could do really is never heard that just analogy and i like it so my job was simple whatever the producers made i made sure the samples were cleared period okay search i just want to stop you for one second but that's important you know when i say you know i said like you know a lot of times i say you know pharrell came to me and i just knew this guy was gonna be the next next guy i just knew it and it's easy for me to say but you gotta i want you to really break it down for people that who will never actually visually visualize that actual time era because russell says something to you that's very vital to this conversation okay is at that time the lyrics were you were the dopest guy but you might not necessarily be the richest guy so how does this process start of this illmatic and and and what role was you playing at that would be okay yeah so one thing i tell young artists all the time is that the most important part of the journey when you sign a contract isn't the advance how many points you get from your record nasa's first album he had the same points as billy joel and billy joel had been an artist for 20 years wow because i wanted to make sure that he was protected i also made sure that the recording budget was really low right so he wouldn't have any recruitment recouping right but i also knew for people that don't know that meaning he wouldn't owe a lot before he sees money off the album they have to recoup right everything's spent on that and you said it was important for them for you to get all the samples cleared which in that people that's right clearing a lot of samples which was ruining their careers as well why i've never seen a check from a third base record because back then when you sampled they would take 100 of your publishing they didn't care if he was even paying them or was it like that well if you didn't clear it they could do whatever they want when they come back in court that's what they're doing now that's what these young [ __ ] is doing now like they're just sampling this [ __ ] getting caught you're saying just take this [ __ ] but back then they were at least trying to take us well we tried we tried but with with us it was different with us it was and when i say us it was a team it was my man sake aka mark pearson i got to give him his flowers because i don't think he gets enough recognition he was my gm at searchlight okay i mean so like mark ran day to day so right now was never assigned to wow pitch it was search life he was right he was assigned to searchlight columbia okay but for all intent and purpose it was columbia okay we were just the production company so if you see the first print it says executive producer faith newman mcsearch there's a little searchlight production logo on the bottom okay but it wasn't our label all right so i want to make sure all the samples were cleared so anytime primo did a record anytime any of the other producers did a record i said give me all the sample clearance information cleared all the samples got it all done all under budget everything was done when the album came out april 23rd that first week we did 165 000 albums week one nas was a millionaire week one he's never on he's never had an unrecouped week in his [ __ ] career ever ever yeah now the other side of that yeah the unfortunate side is o.c which is a story i've never told okay so that's why i actually that's like um it was like oc and nahs was almost like some would argue that even at one point oc was the go-to guy that's why i actually felt like you signed oc first but you you had no no no i did sign oc first and i got him his deal when i went to wild pitch okay so now let's take it from what you just said so yeah so with oc when we signed oc to wow pitch we had while pitch was going through emi right i was no longer gonna make records with third base i'd already put out my indie my independent rec and my solo record sorry solar record with def jam my wife and i were gonna have our first child and third base was on cbs right it was on deaf channel sony okay jam cbs whatever but it was deft okay so i did my solo record it did it did okay we did about 400 000 copies we had two number one records it was okay it wasn't terrible it was okay um but i took a lot of money off the table on that deal because i never got [ __ ] from russell before so i wanted to make sure i kicked off right right so when i made the decision to go to wild pitch i said i got to bring over with me so my deal with wild pitch was i'm gonna have oh with me and we're gonna make his first album oh with nas knew what he wanted he did what he did and it was done there was some you know like there were some really cool moments during that time like me driving him to mount vernon 40 times to go get a hundred tracks from pete and they finally settled on that but for the most part like with q-tip it was one and done primo was you know it's really just simple it was simple les it was in his backyard like whatever they did they did you know it was all of that and it was easy would oc oc would bring me track after track after track and i'd be like nope nope because for me as a guy who loves hip-hop and had the real privilege like and it's i say it as a privilege like i was the forest gump of hip-hop at one point like anything that ever happened from like 1985 to whatever i was there i was there when scholar rock died i was there when krs and millie mel battled in latin quarter i was i mean i was there at every juncture of i was there when public enemy got booed off the stage at last quarter and a year later came back with rebel without a pause like i mean i was i was there like i was like you know what i'm saying like yeah yeah um i was there when g-rap told me there was a kid in in in lefrak aka iraq him and his man were coming together with a group i was deaf because he lived around the corner and he had an artist named white boy oh yes he did yes right yeah so i was just the forrest gump of hip-hop i was everywhere right so with oh he'd make song after song after song and i'd say no but we're not ready it's not ready you're not ready it's not ready and it got to a point where we almost like on a regular basis we would almost get the fisticuffs on the roof of wild pitch where i thought every time like i might get thrown off the roof or he might get thrown off the roof like but i said please i said oh just trust me trust me when you make the right record we'll know and everything else will happen please believe me i'm in my office oh comes in he's dead silent and he pushes me out of the way for my and i'm like oh here we go and i said oh and he said and he pressed the dat player and he put in a downtown there is his hardcore [Applause] we're done and two weeks later word life was done two weeks everything came with that topic everything everything what year was that record when that wreckage dropped yo let me tell you something um i don't know where i'm at in the world but i that was hip-hop bro when that i got a call from flex at the tunnel i'm in bed with my wife and my newborn if you look at the oc album word life on the bottom left corner there's a baby in a cat in a bassinet with light shining on it that's my daughter that's my oldest daughter wow i get a call at midnight it's flex from the tunnel come now and my wife's like you ain't going nowhere i'm like flex just called me to the tunnel i'm gone like i said i love you you and i will we will work on our relationship but i don't to the tunnel and from my house to the tunnel was like 23 minutes i got there 17. by the grace of the most high there was parking right on the block right i scoot up i cut through the line jessica lets me through i get to the dj booth he gives me a hug he goes watch whatever he was playing took off vikka vikka vikka vika and the whole crowd their time's limited hard rocks too right and baby chris may rest in peace grabs me he goes i need to manage o.c right at that time there was this this was the the power level there was baby chris may rest in peace and he had violator so he had jeff jim there was puff with big and craig and it was me with nas and oc yeah and that was that was the that was the trifecta in new york that was the trilogy right chris had chris had violator so he had he had busta and he had you know so scenario yeah tribe he had you know native tongue basically yeah basically but he was and he was the go-to manager puff was the go-to producer and i was a go-to executive production company right and that's what we were right and that's how we kind of had this thing the problem was i had oh signed to the wrong label and the other problem was i was a 24 year old who didn't know [ __ ] about being an executive and while chris had leor and russell and james cruz and puff had andre harrell and this one that one i had nobody all right and i was making decisions making grown man decisions as a [ __ ] child because i'm just happy i'm just happy to be making music i'm just happy being able to feed my family and just being able to do what i love like i don't know what the [ __ ] i'm doing right right but i know radio right so i know that part and i and i and i know music but the everything else i didn't know anything i didn't know anything and that's how i kind of that's that's where this fell and nasa's deal was i wasn't going to do a long-term deal with nasa wasn't set like that and not didn't want me to do a long-term deal it was get them right do it was written i didn't have my name on it was written but i took care of all the business and that was it right so that was that and then wild pitch folded and as soon as it folded i met mark echo and i started building echo unlimited with more right the clothing line yeah wow part of the beginning of the clothing line as well i did all the marketing and promotion for echo unlimited at the beginning when i met mark mark was doing shirts on broadway right it was ill bill my man where we later did non-fiction together who said to me yo there's this dude he just does shirts you should check him out he needs help it's not going limited so we went from 95 doing i don't know a couple of 100 000 a year to when i left in 98.99 we were at 957 million a year you know what i'm saying so now it turned into complex media and all that yeah and and i was so thankful that mark allowed me to see that like to watch that he let me watch complex grow i'm dear friends with rich antonello and all the guys up there um i even got a little clock made out of me and we when we did the madden 2000 on the on the map the echo team i'm on that team so i'm on the team yeah i know i know um so it's like you know so i was one of these guys that i was fortunate enough that i was everywhere and i had the history of radio because when we were coming up we were basically told look if you some [ __ ] white boys that are gonna get on black radio you better know every black program director forward and backwards right because they weren't playing hip-hop during the day not even on on kiss nothing so i had to learn all of that i had to learn who these people were and i learned them and not only did i learn them but i appreciated them so the first radio station i ever went to to pitch my record stepping to the am was helen little at das and wes johnson at the time was the header so you had to work your own records yeah yeah yeah yeah out of work i mean work them so i'm about to break it down so when we went to see helen little at dis in philly shout out to philly um she was the first woman in urban radio to run a a group d.a.s was like a group right and when i went in there i started telling her about her history started telling her how that i knew how she came up i knew what she did because i went to the new york public library and studied there was no [ __ ] google [ __ ] of google or you know google was summoned a baby that was a noise a baby me you know i mean that was no [ __ ] internet yeah i mean it was me going to the but i knew them and bought it and my favorite story is so we i went in there for 45 minutes when i left wes went in there five minutes comes out and and this is like a corporate urban station and wes west johnson made a rest in peace was he was like a mixture between jim brown and don king hell like this six seven and he goes you let me i want to see you in the [ __ ] back of the station right now and i'm sure i'm [ __ ] six one two fifteen he's [ __ ] six six three something and he says to me meet me by the dumpsters you know what that means and i just said and he pulls me in and he goes i want to know everything you just said to helen little i want to know every [ __ ] thing you just said so my voice goes up about ten octaves i told her about my touch and i run down everything he goes he goes let me tell you something let me tell you something little [ __ ] white boy let me tell you something i got public enemy i got ll cool j i got slick rick you know what the [ __ ] you just did to me he goes i gotta go back there tell them black artists you're the first [ __ ] rapper on death gym to have full-time rotation on [ __ ] d.a.s whatever the [ __ ] you just did in there you're gonna do it at every other station we go to we're going to philly we're going to baltimore next uh and i had to learn all those dudes and he benefited right make some noise for that i don't know if this is a rumor or not but you wrote on baby kids i wrote i wrote five four songs on baby kids the soundtrack yeah okay i wrote i wrote when they said i wrote the jefferson song i wrote the money song yeah i wrote all of that oh yeah i wrote all of that so you got to meet um the late great no no i actually was connected to a friend of mine bill stephanie okay he was executive producer of the music soundtrack and he's like yo i need you to write wow how's that cool that's it though that's you know baby kid's one of my favorites of no but but that was also the funny thing was when i was in the middle of my kind of transition out of out of hip-hop people like barry weiss you know they would say hey if you're ever done rapping come work for my promotion department do promo right so when i went back to def jam i wasn't deaf jam as an artist i went there as running the chr department and when i left there i started working records and one of the first records i worked was nori's records wow but also search like promotion i think 80 of every hip-hop record that came out of a label we worked all right so now let me fast-forward boom you work with knives you do this eyes and jay actually have this moment against each other and jay uses you as a punchline he says i know who i pay god search by publishing oh yeah he said but you weren't getting paid dog you were getting [ __ ] then i know what paid dogs searchlight publishing so the story of the true story about that the it's really crazy because i don't know i don't know that's a great story yeah so i'm the head of chr at def jam and uh they're about to put out that uh reasonable doubt and kareem i think was korean it was either kareem dame and jay or dame and jay come to my office and said hey we gotta clear this sample this dead president sample take care of us i said okay no problem give me like 2 500. but just know we're going to have 25 of your record on the publishing and he was like all right cool that was it he gave me a check for 2500 i delivered it to zombo but if you look at the liner notes on dead presidents nas is one of the publishers so i say yeah that line can live as much as it lives but jay don't own a piece of nasa's catalog but nozzles piece of js catalog and that's a fact though oh we didn't know that we didn't because we thought like when he said that search like publishing that um that he was meaning that that nas didn't have none of his publishing no no no no no no no no no no no no no i have a five percent right yeah i have a five percent admin fee which i'm like to this day on those two albums i just make sure like things like if naz wants to do it i just sign off that's it like for me like when i think about being a production company right i think there's two trains of thought train one is the artist ain't [ __ ] and the production company makes all the money right well the second train is the audience ain't [ __ ] and i'm gonna figure out how to jerk the artist right that's most of how hip-hop has run their production companies i had a third train of thought which was i wasn't gonna be the jew to take take advantage of a black man so i don't need to get wealthy off not and i don't my checks are very humble and i'm okay with that because they're going to go for the rest of my life right you know when you think about streaming today right and you think about illmatic nomad extremes 400 million a year to this day i get my fair share i don't get more than i deserve i don't get less than i deserve i get exactly what the contract says in fact and i'll keep it a buck with all of y'all 2007 i get a letter from sony they say oh we we overpaid you so you're not going to be getting a check um and my lawyer goes oh we're going to sue innocent we're not going to let it rock we'll we'll recoup eventually we'll recoup and we did it took like 10 years because i don't give a [ __ ] what was the basis of them saying they overpaid they said that the artist royalty that i got paid was congruent with what nas was supposed to get paid so i essentially got nods royalties but nas didn't it wasn't minused off nasa's share right basically paid like it was like double dipping right so they paid me exactly what they were paying now but it wasn't accurate either because the fact that matter is nas was at like x amount of points and i was at three so that was the only correction we told them and after they made that correction they fixed it we kept it moving it was done one and done but it took like 10 years for me to ever see another check and again i'm okay with that because to me the ability to earn isn't about one thing right i i learned a long time ago it's not the strong who survives it's the flexible right right so i would much rather fight mike tyson than a yogi because a yogi's gonna bend me up in [ __ ] ways that i'm never gonna get fixed again at least with mike i know when it's coming i see the punch coming i know i'm going to get a yogi i don't know like yoga like a yoga person a guy who's like can bend and because if he oh he [ __ ] grabs you like if a yogi grabs you bro and he starts he knows how to bend your butt you know you might be [ __ ] up for life at least if mike hits you you're gonna be in pain right let's be real clear you won't be in pain but you're going to be able to recover but if a yogi bends you in a way your body might never recover so i say i would much rather be flexible i much i much rather be like water right than be like a [ __ ] wall right but did you receive like like slack because of that because a lot of people like i said a lot of people took it as searched on the nas publishing no in fact it was the exact opposite whenever that [ __ ] verse came on in the club i would get love like because my name got mentioned people didn't even realize what it meant they were like oh [ __ ] not jay mention search that's [ __ ] crazy so you sure you never got nothing bad like even from like nice campers no no no no no it's all love all the time that's beautiful you know even like if you think about all the times nas has mentioned me on his records there's like seven records where he mentions like our friendship or how i did him right right you know what i mean like he's never once said anything bad about me because he has no reason because i treated him like a grown-ass man i treated him like a professional and i treated his music like a business right so that he would never have to worry and his daughter would never have to worry his daughter and my daughter the same age they were born a month apart his daughter and my daughter never have to worry god damn make some noise for that so did you ever repair the beef with m.c hammer because you gave him the gas face yeah no no we gave him he's never i've never listened to the gas face again and he's his might have been the harshest gas face you gave out didn't you say something did he put out a hit on you or something yeah but roy cohen who the hell is elroy calling that was leon so i've been in recovery now it'll be 10 years right so one of the things that i'm coming up to in in nine years of recovery is making amends yeah and you know you got to make amends to him yeah can i say from the outside looking in but i know i want you to continue make your amends but i looked at it again today and i know i just said this earlier but i want to just reiterate i think his might have been the most harsh gas based because you put his glasses and the hammer yeah there was not a hammer thing then you had a guy walk through yeah that was that was the two big mc that was his cover okay i'm sorry but no but the point is okay what happened well the point was that he dis run dmc and and for me being a queen's kid yes and having jam master jay may rest in peace put me in a game it was unforgivable like it was unforgivable but it was an emcee thing that wasn't the person you asked the crew what do we think about him right but that's not why because my old partner on the cactus record which is the song on the album hammer's record was pl uh turn his mother out right turn unless right my old ramen partner said that the cactus our album the cactus turned hammer's mother out oh right but that and let's be real clear about two things we're lyricists first good and always that was a dope [ __ ] line period if i thought for one second because i love my mother right if i thought for one second that someone would have misinterpreted that i would have told that dude to take the line off the record i'm looking like you was wrong you know what i'm saying turning your mother out no the cat just turned hammer's mother out but i didn't say it okay and i but again i'm because i'm the one who's in the front because i'm the one i took the heat and because it was and that line was in response to the run dmc disc you're saying yes right it was not and also because his album was trash right like we didn't like his album we were from new york but you brought his mother involved trash to you guys because a lot of the country everyone's [ __ ] with it and again in retrospect looking at hammer now his career is a pretty incredible career yeah the yeah he balanced out yeah where we were was that there was new york and there was nothing else right that once you left the tri-state we talked about this all the time that's why there's another animosity out there and when you're a kid from queens from far right who's never been on a plane before who's never been outside the state before to have somebody come from someplace else that you don't even know about and dis run dmc right and for me personally jay heard me run see if you had a reason they just run the mc y'all [ __ ] just this one mc me okay go ahead yeah i'm sorry helping this guy out so much in our argument but let me fill it up and finish and mind you hammer that's the bay area it's no joke yeah but you saying at that time like new york for lack of a better term looked at everybody else like if you're not from new york it's whack that's the way the sentiment was put out there from new york that's a fact nwa wasn't out at that time nwa was different okay because nwa respected you know the beats that dre had on that album were heavily influenced by third base in fact when ice cube said it on this show when ice cube came to new york he came to work with our old producer from the cactus wow because that [ __ ] slapped wow right even mc8 from compton's most wanted on their biggest record one time gaffled him up on the second verse he said they got pulled over bumping the cactus wow you know what i'm saying so it was different and also your message that for example let me just finish went further than a lot of that their message was different right because we were about [ __ ] the police we were about the dope man we were about that we weren't about dre saying some dropped science we dropped english we weren't about that but we were about everything else and they respected the production and cube respected what we did right so l.a was different and it's again it's iced tea it's different it was just cut different the hip-hop that hammer was doing at the time was not indicative of what we thought was real hip-hop native tongues nwa queen latifah eric being rock kim you know what it wasn't right so if i would have thought it was a reflection of like vanilla ice type of type of thing yeah well i mean he put on vanilla it was worse with him yeah i mean no vanilla ice was worse than hammer yeah because at least at least ham was black right he came from an authentic place hammer whether you like it or not that's subjective right you're gonna let cersei no no no no no no no he's absolutely right but the point was the music wasn't where we were in our hearts and in our minds it wasn't where we were and it pissed me off that i would listen to new york radio and not hear de la and not hear tribe but i'd hear m c hammer and vanilla ice it's [ __ ] crazy that's why we made pop goes the weasel right because it's [ __ ] crazy are you a vanilla ice you have a clash in real life i mean no i've never met the dude but the point is white and white crime does not happen it happens all the time every [ __ ] every every [ __ ] mass shooting in this country is white on white crime but yeah no why don't white rap no but the beastie boys never clash no we did we did okay can we get to it i'm so surprised you don't know this [ __ ] like i'm sorry it's not about me knowing you know what i mean come on baby you know what i mean um no so me and mike d clashed um early early on before the cactus album came out i um i actually talked about this in the beastie boy book um we clashed because i went to mike d's house and i asked him about that yeah this was like yeah this is on barrow street okay when okay when uh russell moved on barrow street okay so we went over to i went over to mike's house and i said you know i need some help russell's you know shelving our record it's we damn near finished you know and they had already left to go to capital and he was giving me great advice like he was like yo you got to do this you got to make sure this this and this how's that cool they already start this after no sleep too brooklyn this is already okay five million yeah this solidified and as i'm leaving the crib he starts throwing [ __ ] at me like laughing like sponge things and thing he's laughing so i'm like he's physically throwing [ __ ] yeah he's like he's like he's like he's like throwing [ __ ] posters at me right like he's like lay down and i'm like you're [ __ ] dusty but then later like six months later spin magazine did a piece on paul's boutique and we had already dropped stuff and today and the gas face was already a heat bubble and they asked him what do you think about third base and mike d said in this article he said yeah search came to my house and he said some [ __ ] and i threw [ __ ] at him and i'm like oh this [ __ ] is about to [ __ ] get it so then we went back in we did sons of third base on the first that's the first cut on the cactus album because we wanted to let it know i'm like yo way to [ __ ] like if you're gonna like white people in hip-hop like some [ __ ] that are from the block right like really like some dudes for real like [ __ ] with alcatraz for real right you know what i mean because that's what that was what we called that's what we call far rockaway because it was only one way on and one way off yeah right so the impetus of that battle that beef was that and since then we've we got cool like i made peace with yak before he died like i had him on my syndicated radio show like me and michael cool and and you know i did their book and you know it's all love but at the time we felt like we had to be like the knights like we had to be the white knight of hip-hop we had to save the culture right because we felt like nobody's helping you know blah blah blah blah blah blah blah it was like a black you know what i'm saying it's black this i had to be a white guy black must have been a white guy that started all that make the gas face with a little white lies right right right right so when we did pop goes the weasel it was a simple philosophy for us we're gonna take a huge [ __ ] pop record [ __ ] sledgehammer and we're gonna [ __ ] dis pop radio and we're gonna diss everything they do so if the record blows up and we go to pop radio we can go in there and be like yo why aren't you playing this why aren't you playing that why while we're here you're going to play this this this and this and this and this and this and this it didn't work we just became what we didn't want to be and for me my whole career was performing in front of black people and within six months i got white guys stage diving off my [ __ ] stage like i was like the [ __ ] is this like i don't even understand none of this like i understand what's going on like what what kind of [ __ ] pizarro world did i just walk into right um but for me it's always been preserving black culture and it's also been about representing protecting artists you know it's always been there you know even you know and i'm gonna pivot here but even with like timeless with our podcast company like we just did a whole series on big daddy kane that's coming out kane owns all that content i don't own it i licensed it to him for 15 years i paid him to do it and we did it in immersive sound design i spent almost a year negotiating with dolby atmos to understand the the schematics of how the earpods work how headphones work so we could do 5.1 surround sound so when you [ __ ] with our podcast you hear that [ __ ] you hear [ __ ] kane in lg you hear kane on the block in brooklyn you hear when they're doing the karate kicks watching the [ __ ] kung fu movies on 42nd like i wanted his story kane story to be more than the oratory like i wanted you to be and understand the environment that he came from oh it's a new artist when i say new i mean yeah that you [ __ ] with maybe not signed but that you you you listen to it and appreciate and enjoy right now probably the the biggest artist i [ __ ] with is this kid out of feeling name other real i [ __ ] love this dude he's a [ __ ] monster there's another kid out of atlanta that i [ __ ] with heavy uh 21 year old kid named surf put out three mixtapes called bad human batter human and baddest human they put out a new ep called sustaining injury that kid is [ __ ] hard body i love that kids lyrics lyrics but also his understanding of who he is at 21 years old and his storytelling um i [ __ ] with him heavy um lyricism is dead no definitely not i [ __ ] with you know what who i just listened to and i love is uh rob markman i listen i listen upon the right and i just listen to this new album it's crazy now robert though you know what i'm saying like yeah yeah you know what i'm saying so there's like a lot of new artists that i [ __ ] with i'm not making some noise for rob yeah i'm saying like i'm not i'm a private journalist here journalist turn rapper yeah and like i'm not one of these dudes i'll never be one of these dudes that gets stuck in an era you know nielsen just did a report that said 98 of men and women over 30 stop listening to new music only 2 and after 30 you only go back to the artist that you love right right i'm not that dude i'm just not that dude you know i love 50 50. well no because you're still immersed but when you think about becoming 30 31 32 and you're not in the music business what does that become right it becomes responsibilities it becomes jobs it becomes family it becomes children it becomes debt it becomes you know so you're not digging in the crates like you want to you're not going to dat piff anymore you're not going to sound cloud you're not going to band camp you're taking your kids to [ __ ] date camp you know you're not you know you're not going to [ __ ] i heard you talk about clubhouse earlier yeah you're on clubhouse yeah i got the largest [ __ ] club in the [ __ ] clubhouse we have um it's called the new money moguls okay and we have um a meeting every tuesday called problem solvers oh it's with some of the greatest minds you've ever met leon teen who is the only woman ever run jordan brand dante simpson who did espat tv who did um the little nas x for roblox and did travis scott he did those two deals for fortnite wow he's on there mark byers former gm of motown who handles the marvin gaye estate who handles all the consulting for burner boy he's in there arya wright 20-year veteran at diago knows distribution backwards and forwards so we have about five to 600 people every week and we solve them we problem solve what i'm tired of in clubhouse and i see this all the time people want to talk but they don't want everybody's expert but it's okay to be an expert but be an expert and help like i i break down my life to this point like this in my 20s my 30s my 40s and now my 50s all i do is learn i continue to learn my 20s all i did was learn i didn't earn i didn't do anything else i i learned i just studied learn study learn 30s i learned i earned but i churned if you was [ __ ] whack if you were not benefiting my life you're [ __ ] out of here right you'd get the christmas card and you get the hanukkah card and you get the new years but you're done 40s i was learn churn and earn i made more money in my 40s than i ever did my whole life but now in my 50s i churn i learn i earn and i return so problem solving is about you got a business what's your business situation oh this is your business situation oh well that person's right here he's in this room bring them up bring them up boom so we do three things in problem solvers one is we connect you with people period oh you got a clothing company you need distribution here's my man he got six [ __ ] plants in china done oh you need amazon my man is an expert at amazon done oh you need radio promotion my man does this done so that's one two we check you out we evaluate and then we point out what you're doing wrong oh you got a problem with social media fix that you got a problem with this fix that or three damn i like what you do i like your move i like the way you're moving we're gonna invest in you come meet us after the meeting and then we have a meeting and our advisory board comes together and we give you paper and we either become a partner with you short term midterm or long term and that's what we do on clubhouse yeah let me ask you something sir something here efn started this podcast once one we said we wanted to interview legends we wanted to interview people such as yourself that been in the game that you know sometimes you know when this is a young man's game so sometimes we get overlooked that's one thing but not only that we wanted to uh show love and admire to the people that came before us with this hip-hop union we really want to form a real hip-hop union where a person has 10 years or more and put this game in and maybe he didn't you know make it jay-z status he didn't make it to uh like a sag like sag you have a sad moment but i feel that's the the the easiest thing yes can i ask you a couple of questions if you don't mind yeah no problem what's the purpose in one sentence what's the purpose probably we should take care of our own because i feel like i feel like hip-hop like you know one thing about you um when i look at you and all honesty and respect i i see you before i see you as a as a white person i look at you as a hip-hop person and to me hip-hop is a race in itself if i would have to pick first i would say i'm hip-hop first and then i'm black and puerto rican but hip-hop because it's just and i feel like there's a lot of people that's like me that identify that now if you came in this game and it's just like if you look at these old documentaries you look at this that's why i'm so glad you cleared up the the the publishing but you look at the it was this this image of these people taking advantage of these kids and just eating off of them for the rest of their life and them never being able like i just seen um i think o.j the juice man say that he has to die 10 years before he could even his kids could even has to be dead 10 years before his kids could even think about owning the rights to his first the short term is creating an opportunity for artists both young and new to establish some sort of funding where they are protected short midterm and long term so the the process if i'm hearing you correctly for the sake of clarity well i think you need to let me finish because i think it's fine but we might have two different visions i want to tell you in mind about this this is you being from far right for a while for people that know it's probably one of the hardest times shout out to another kid bobby j from rockaway that kid is a [ __ ] monster okay one of the hardest places in queens but the thing about that is most people that will make it for far rock most people that will get this opportunity they're seeing a number in their face and they're not thinking about calling a lawyer they're not thinking about calling the manager they're thinking about like what you said get them out of the projects like you are i think you said nah i said that was like what i lovingly refer to as homeboy management right and you know you got from you know queensbridge to 40 projects to all these different places that these people have these these these talents and when they make it to a certain level uh it's people who who who who does take advantage right but look let's remember why we started the conversation we started because there was pioneers getting sick without having health insurance that's how we started the conversation yeah so what i was saying like a sag that gives access to insurance to health insurance maybe starts to create some kind of retirement fund but i say sad because sagas is as much as you put into it is what you kind of get out of it right you know because not everybody's going to be you know what rocky bucano is doing at hip hop museum with putting the top floor shout out to the universal hip-hop museum coco rock giving them permanent that's the one they don't have one of them in the bronx i'm an ambassador for them right now so what rocky is doing is is similar as he's creating lower income housing for people there permanently right so it's that he's also creating housing for theodore for coca-cola rock so they never have to pay rent ever again for him and his families right we need to hear more about this but then we need to [ __ ] have rocky on him but the point is but the point is didn't wendy dave do that with rap coalition didn't she do that in trying to take care of you know cash money trying to take your kids yeah right yeah but we want to take care of the whole culture but what happened what happened to wendy day what happened she definitely got sidelined right not only gets online she got silenced and then the people that were supposed to take care of her didn't take care of her right so a union only works if the people that are buying into the union continue to support the union right right right so the reason why sag-aftra works is yeah you can be in the union cost you're 100 grand right right so it's counting for the masses yeah back in the days the unions and the other part of it that is the vital part of it right is that if you take an artist like jay-z and he said i'm charging [ __ ] for what they did to the cold crush right right that line is only as powerful as what he actually gives back to the cold crush right so we're talking about coal crush we're talking about right so on my podcast the end of episode one with kane kane talks about the most influential emcee in his life you're going to bug out because we we've been talking about his grandmaster cass right so in the end of the episode one of the podcasts he starts to recite kaz lyrics from a park champ that he heard on a fourth generation cassette tape like it was written yesterday so we interviewed cass and i said cass do you remember these lyrics and he was like [ __ ] those are that's what i call classics and he starts rhyming him and i'd lean back and i said [ __ ] what if something happens to cats don't lyrics disappear we got to make a record we got to make a record now and it's got to end the first episode so he did right and we gave it to him publishing royalties everything gave it to him 100 his so that's what the [ __ ] you just said and so mace may 9th nft auction for that record so that's the union that's the union it doesn't have to be organized it has to be curated and ex and executed right and it doesn't need to be 10 people in a room to argue about what you want and you want it [ __ ] do it right [ __ ] do it problem solver that's why i did problem solver you and i can sit here you he can smoke weed all day you could drink all day we could [ __ ] philosophize all day action the action do it right right so here's my here's my small contribution to that right it's one thing but it's the first record cavs ever owned what a hundred percent of for life i don't own it i gave it to him and the record [ __ ] is a bop that [ __ ] ain't some corny [ __ ] no that [ __ ] is [ __ ] a [ __ ] smash all right play it you gotta glide up turn that [ __ ] okay turn that [ __ ] up all right and we're talking the cats that come on dream channel so to me that's the answer you know i think we do a lot of philosophizing and hip-hop right we we grew up with the idea of how do we create something that is ideas into curation right got a great director gil green here right he takes ideas right you know gil will take words and create amazing images on screens right and i love you brother but it he can't do what he does if he sits for six months on a [ __ ] idea because then they're gonna move forward it's curation execution direction done right right so do it don't worry don't think about it do it right what how do you execute how do you curate how do you do it just do it you just do it so you're saying for each individual to do their part as best as they can because obviously what we're talking about why can't we have a sag why can't we have a union why because hip-hop can't have something that big can't have something that organized no they can't are we really boxing because what is that we don't have the resources therefore 1905. you know the first person in sag was charlie chaplin one of one yo it starts with one you don't need ten you need one all right so norah you're one i'm in let's go and then that's three that's good take three percent you know but but but you but you everybody has to be in sag here in the that to me is that to me is the essence of what hip-hop truly is right when you think of the tenets of hip-hop right it's not about drip it's not about jewelry it's not about that it's peace unity loving having fun when the culture of the when the culture started right and when we not right now serge i'm gonna be on i don't know you got youtube but it's not about that no more here's the thing but that's not just right but just because it's not about that right now it doesn't mean it's just hip-hop let's it's this it's yes the park jams were violent yes there was a lot of challenges yes there was all of that however what we're seeing today is rap music and artists and social media that is separate right and if you just automatically lob it in and say oh that's hip hop then you're not really focusing on the true tenets of what brought us all together to this table right and that's the that's the key of it it's culture that is not culture that is a reaction and and a part of who they are and where they live and what they experience and who they are one million agree with you but the thing about it is the same way somebody in far rockaway queens and what's the edgeman what is uh edge called projects red farm saying shout out to russian projects yeah can film is the same person a kid in fort greene your film but it's the same place a person in tacoma washington seattle and washington could do film the same thing have a couple of people around them that can actually blow up from their own house okay there's no og he's involved there's nobody helping this kid out and this kid continues to make it he's no way shaped for more fashion listening to us and that's and that's eventually agreed to that no no i agree with him i don't agree with that what part did you don't agree i just feel i feel the disconnect happened there was a disconnect that was that oh geez stop being oh geez i said this a long time i've said this plenty of times of course they're not going to look up to og's anymore because what's there to look up to right but if a kid that's what i'm trying to say i think you misunderstood my point okay you just said to me what i'm saying is right now we used to have to go to a wild pitch we have to go to uh uh uh that's the industry yeah that's gatekeepers that's different stuff and they still have to do that if they want to get a big big bag they want to they want to do that and here's the bottom line sound cloud they don't got no a and r and this is a record label that's out there it's willing to pay him and say [ __ ] it we'll give you everything just keep doing the [ __ ] you doing because don't know what the [ __ ] they doing right back then it was artist curation there was artist development you actually tried to at least right now they're like these guys are just out there doing whatever right if whatever's working let's just do it because they're numbers it's all what's this they keep calling it algorithms right but that's industry shift and versus we're talking either culture or industry or is married in the church we asked you this because we talked about the white rapper show before yeah but when you did the white rapper show and the white rappers came you sat down you had one drink and you bounced why no i thought this is pumped i thought that's exactly right that's right so you didn't so you didn't because we just did a white rapper reunion on my podcast and they all asked me the same thing they said damn did y'all hate us and we're like no we didn't hate you we we we appreciated where you were from but when nori was on the top of his building he thought he was being [ __ ] pumped he sat down and bounced out like he didn't have he doesn't have an opinion about who you are what you are he could give two shits he walked in he thought there was some candy camera [ __ ] going on and he messed it up that is not him personally he don't personally feel bad right i think of sasha i think it was you there's a couple of y'all just going to come hang out you know we got this white rabbit show whatever when i came in and it was just a couple of corny moments where i looked it was like i this might be this might be how ashton kutcher set people up they got searching them for you so i'm thinking like this and i'm like you know what i'm gonna just bounce but when i look back at the whole episode and the whole season in this entirety i wish y'all would have told me like yo no no so i wasn't sure so i wasn't allowed to be anywhere near them do you know why because it would have been just about me and him for about three hours right but they wanted the engagement it was the same thing with joelle santana when they went to meet jewels and and john brown gave him a [ __ ] burnt card like he made a fake card and like handed him this [ __ ] cardboard card jewels did the same thing sat down ate his food [ __ ] looked at his watch and mash there was no you know because we wanted originals we wanted we wanted to see what was going to happen organically and these organic and now you look back right and you see nori's reaction because norway literally went all right i mean he slapped yo and the best part about that was it was nori and nori yeah yeah well and i wanna and i and i'm so glad i'm here with you because i really have to share this with you when i took you on the road on promo [Music] every single radio station said the same thing after you left the studio is he interested in doing radio does he want to host a radio show every position right now every single one because he loves doing amazing on radio i have never i don't like to use finite words you'll see that i'm working on my wordplay i don't like to use following that words but i can use it in front of him i've never had an artist go on the road where program directors om's gm's were listening and then came back and said is he interested in career and radio i remember when you called me and told me yo and i didn't yo i'll be i'll keep it a buck i didn't know what the [ __ ] you were talking about i didn't know what you were talking about but you said podcast right the podcast and i'm like what the [ __ ] is a podcast who the [ __ ] cares about this [ __ ] you're a [ __ ] genius you're a [ __ ] and and and i have my company and my wife and i because it's not me there's no more searchlight the name of the company is 4mc it's the name of my wife and my children right because it's about this right and it's about what you guys built for me so what i did in the streets of far rockaway you did here for me you returned your energy let me say one thing right because i do use google now at first we started this i didn't use google but when i googled you it was so enlightening and so fun because the first two words of your name is mc always i'll never drop that so when you hit google and then you type in mc there's only a couple of other people who who pop up do you know who those people are probably emcee hammer no yes okay emcee hammer okay who's the other person who would probably see light no probably not light like didn't come up with me no emcee i would probably see i would probably say you know what the the name that pops in my head is probably and it's not that it's probably m.c ren but it's probably not ren it was emcee and queens cause you know google's um and i want to talk about this for a second because queen's bridge deserves all its flowers goddammit but in the podcast we did with kane we started to talk because we interviewed all the people that he came up with that were you know obviously still with us right right and we started to talk about lafayette gardens in brooklyn yeah here's the list of producers and artists that came out of lg easy mode b wow which doctor who did ramen is fundamental who did biggie all right mr c a b money from rapping is fundamental it can be arg and then obviously can't spend a lot of time there right but it can be argued it's not right or wrong but it can be argued that lg is probably just as dope as queensbridge wow we looked at it like that now i'm not saying it's factual because there's also a point of it where after 88 90 91 92 you had the surgeons of queensbridge with nas like a generation right with hot day with hot day with mob deep and and so on and so forth but you look at lgbtq no no but but the thing about molly is molly technically didn't live in queensbridge which i found out he had a house near queensbridge he moved to queensbridge to produce but paid to fall he did admit on it yes he paid he did no no absolutely absolutely right projects so it's interesting to me because even with me being a forrest gump of hip-hop i didn't connect that cool v is from lg wow you know what i'm saying like so you told me that's cool yeah dj cool v better known to y'all as kamas vaughn lee or you know what i'm saying like you know right so it could be argued and that's the fun that i'm having with my podcast is that i'm now looking at it oh [ __ ] i should do a whole podcast you are the guy who's affiliated to queensbot you're not going to win this argument on this market brother i'm from far rockaway how [ __ ] how proud was you to see that um i was going to grab you uh recently like uh i'm out chilling you know i don't i've never watched the grammys they never invited me the [ __ ] i want to do that like i'm a hater right come on hater when it comes to [ __ ] like that you don't invite me i think your [ __ ] is whack if you don't make me see i don't give a [ __ ] that's just who i am but um so i've never i've never gotten invited to the grammy even my hottest like i think they invited me and took it back i was like i'm not sure so i never had that dream right right but i've never made i've made that level but not i felt like and then recently we're just sitting down they're like you're going to watch the grammys you're like no but i wake up the next day and they're like yo he won i'm at about a restaurant we're in uh billy's we order all the crab legs i drink all the champagne get me out champagne i got and i do a blog and everybody and it was like because you know i'm not from queensbridge i'm from left rock city but i got a lot of love left right right well yeah you know the same thing but i you know but oh my god a lot of love and i just wanted to show them just that love i didn't want to i didn't want to interpret and say we're bringing this grammy back to life rack and queensbury because that's not what naz nazar is queensbridge all day so i did it i picked up zola's place i picked up my my boy left's place and i mean all i could see all of them be posted and just being happy and rejoicing and it just made me feel so proud because that's what we is like in queens like sometimes we're so territorial that we'll be like you know up from lefrak but i'm just from section one i'm from queensbridge but i'm just from vernon boulevard i'm from far rock but i'm just from yo yeah you know 40 projects i'm i'm from south jamaica but i'm just from baseley like um i feel like there was this moment where just all of us queens rejoice so how good did you feel from being so good the trifecta for me it's it's threefold for me coming here one is to be here with you two is thank you understanding that nas not only won a grammy but got into the library of congress right yep number one chandra bangladesh but three is making the left on this block and seeing mf doom on the corner wow um because you know i know zev love x yes mf doom yeah yeah yeah when i'm googling what am i doing right up yeah yeah well i mean i don't know mf doom i know zev love x i know daniel dumalay i know sub rock me rest in peace i know the family you know i mean like that those are my people you know that's just not it's not just some artists you know i'm like changing the subject yeah i'm staying on the subject yeah but what mf doom they pronounced him dead and it was on halloween like wasn't like a lot of people in hip-hop at first was like is this such like because listen i remember one time people were saying mf doom was in six places at one time as if there was other people that was yeah other people would perform awareness yeah i mean i mean again i don't know i know love x wow because you know when i was putting out my little independent records before third base i was hanging out in long beach long island um which was you know hop skipping a jump from far rockaway i met my homeboy i met i met otis and then i met doom and he and i told them i said yo when i get on you get a period in a conversation um he always wanted to wear the mask no no no no no way later when he he put on the mask after his brother died yeah okay after his brother died it was um it was one of those moments he's grabbing make sure we go back to the grammy and now and all that but yeah but but but no no but but i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna come back to the grammys and explain why so um you know so seeing doom at the um at the funeral and him mashing out and then this year nas went into grammy watching watching the grammys for the first time seeing doom on the on the screen but then the credits roll and executive producer fatima robinson and fatima and i used to dance together with stretch and shake because the iou dances in in lq wow so i'm and my man jeff robinson wins for her that's my duel like that's my like i go back to when alicia performed for my my not-for-profit where i can wrap it up at the world trade tower a year before it went down yeah i mean so i'm seeing all this and i'm crying my eyes out happy sad you know a million emotions going through me because it's that it's that moment it's nas it's doom it's for teemo it's jeff it's all of our people finally being where they're supposed to be getting what they're supposed to get you know like i don't know you know if they were gonna show doom right and they did you know when when doom died not only on but when they made the announcement new year's eve the one thing that amazed me was not only the amount of rappers that showed love but it was you knew he died prior to them announcing that no no no no okay all right no the family kept the secrets they kept it secret and i think they did they think they did the right thing because they put his affairs in order doom knew the one thing i know is that doom knew he was gonna die six months before like he they knew he was gonna die um so they put his affairs in order and um to see like tom york from radiohead give him his flowers beth gibbons from porter's head give him his flowers johnny marr from the smiths yeah give him his flowers darius rucker from hoodie and the blowfish give him his flowers like yo it was [ __ ] crazy along with all the other emcees and murals around the world being made murals around the world i got pictures in my from france london trains the the [ __ ] government of france japan that doesn't allow murals to run on trains let the doom murals run amsterdam you know what i'm saying like the impact that he made man was [ __ ] crazy and you don't expect that and you know talking about amends and talking about being in recovery because that's one of the things that we're also doing in our podcast company is me and um my home girl kyle eustis from hip-hop dx we have a podcast called breaking anonymity which is about uh the road to redemption and recovery right because i think there's a stigma people think like oh you can't have fun you can't be around people smoking weed when you're you're an addict you can't be around this no it's about breaking that down and understanding like you can go to a program and get help because there's people that can help you you know i mean and so we have like amazing artists danny boy from house of pain frank gallagher from the talking heads like we have these amazing slain talking about their their road to recovery and one of the things that i've talked about in my amends is there's called direct amends and indirect amends right there's a homeboy of mine here i got to make amends with before i leave right so so there's direct amends but then there's indirect and i always thought man i can make amends with sabra i can make amends with doom so now i got to make indirect amends so the things that i take responsibility for for the distance in our relationship now i gotta fix with the next man or the next woman somebody else right because that's my responsibility right that's my responsibility before they put me in the dirt so the grammys and and the beautiful part about the grammys you know again and going back to it is that it seemed to me for the first time in hip-hop history that the album of the year was balanced alchemix and freddie gibbs like a [ __ ] album is crazy al chemist is a monster he deserved that oh yeah like and you talk about you know griselda like you talk about benny you talk about west side gun you talk about bodie james like [ __ ] are monsters they're getting [ __ ] grammy nominations their movement is crazy it's bad it's balanced you know we got this balance we got this finally we got a little bit of equilibrium you know it makes me want to vote i'm a voter i don't vote i'm i'm like nora i'm [ __ ] you you ain't going to do [ __ ] foreign for anybody i'm saying you know but like there's another this is another election but you know but that's you know it's right it's what it is and and i feel like there's balance finally because there's people like us who are in this range who have the experience who now can say to the grammys and naris like hold up hold up hold on blank don't let's let's look at this and how we look at it is we vote on it right that's beautiful that's beautiful um wait we didn't you still didn't finish telling us about empty hammers hit on you yeah yeah that's for the book i'm not going to talk about no it definitely didn't work but it goes back also to men's like you know so i didn't even say the line but yeah i mean i i'm i'm gonna eventually have to make amends with the men right even though he put a hit out on me right like i have to make amends and where i come from and i'm not being braggadocious when i say this because even though i grew up in a very traditional jewish household i didn't grow up in that household i grew up in reverend project right i grew up in hamel i grew up i grew up on the street like where we come from somebody puts a hit out on you you wipe out their family you don't wipe out the dude you wipe out his mom his sister's brother this cousin his uncle you leave no bloodline you know because the other dudes that i grew up with on the other side of the street in inwood and in rosdale colombo crime family gambino crown family like and that's how they moved right but that's not who i am today and i felt that way for a long time it ate up it you know it ate me a long time like i gotta see this dude eventually i'm a cedars dude not uh i was in a room with him recently on clubhouse and somebody said to me yo you this is the perfect time i'm like no who i'm sorry with him yeah okay but i was like i'm not that's it's not the right time like this is not the right time the time to do it is when we can sit down he and i and i can tell him what my responsibility is what my role is right even though i didn't say the line even though the other dude in my group never never ever talked about it he just kind of kept it moving right so i'm the one because you know i'm the guy that in hip-hop people see as the front man even though it was a group it was all three of us right right you know i mean so that's my responsibility so i'll make that amend when i'm ready because the part of it that that seventh and eighth step is when you're willing i'm not i'm almost there i'm not completely willing to forget that because it was [ __ ] crazy it was serious it was real serious right you know it wasn't any [ __ ] game it was [ __ ] serious um but i know that that's my responsibility you know when we talked about it on on the breaking anonymity podcast we talked about like i love you the responsibility loves flaws it's also what it is but it's also what it is because that's what we talked about it's not a plug just for the sake of doing it no it's not not that i mean that's weird so now as we talk about because you know this is you know drink chest we love cocaine stories here right we just love it right it's just it's just like when you did cocaine one day leo is one of my favorite executives i don't i don't know if really did anybody else wrong but they disappeared they got the gasps no we just we just called him elroy cohen i mean we were just [ __ ] with him listen i love league of legends so i walk in leo call's office one day and he's sitting there and he has um it's a picture on his wall he has on his nose on his nose like a tissue the picture or him the pit the pitcher has a tissue in his nose so i'm looking and i'm like that was a great night i'm like yo is this the time you're on the road on dmc and like he's like no i was sniffing cocaine so much my [ __ ] just bluff and i was like oh my god i love this stuff right no i was not i was not a cocaine okay my my my my my d.o.c which is the slang term for drug attorneys in the room is what you're smoking right there but you can't be in the comfort rico but i'm gonna be honest you haven't seen it you can't be recovering for anything so here's the thing it wasn't the fact that i smoked it it was how i behaved after i smoked it oh and it was the fact that what i did as a man was definitely smoking dust i'm just throwing it out dude yeah that's a whole different heart no no and and the thing was he blamed it on the bus [ __ ] oh man okay so hold up continue so it wasn't it wasn't that it was a combination of a lot of things that made me realize that my addiction level once crashed you never yeah no i once i didn't talk about that at once you don't want it it's a [ __ ] terrible story because it's boring it's gonna [ __ ] it's gonna make the editing fall yo i [ __ ] snorted the line it tasted terrible in the back of my thought i was done it was that's it wow i didn't think that yeah no that was the end of the story that's it that's what i'm saying is [ __ ] terrible but with blood right with my dreams with my drug of choice when i got to a place where i realized it was a problem it wasn't that it was the weed itself it was the behavior that i was masked right so what i learned in recovery was that after i got rid of my doc is i had to start looking at who i was and started to peel back the ending of my authentic self so i started to like look at my character defense i started looking at the things that made me a [ __ ] up individual i started to have to look at the things like because yo i would smoke and then i was [ __ ] a zombie like i was a zombie to my children i was a zombie to my wife i was a zombie in life i was a bad businessman i was a bad partner as a i my personal issues right it didn't always crunch it was totally a crutch but it was i'm gonna be honest what years we talking about they had cocaine your [ __ ] i'm just throwing it out there your body didn't know you probably didn't know i'm just being honest they laced your [ __ ] everything i stopped using i stopped using my stuff i call using my my my cleaning i got this from a doctor my client doctor yes dude alcohol is legal you don't think that's the thing bro so yeah right and let's be really good and i want to explain something for the for the sake of this absolutely i'm not saying that marijuana is bad right right if you just smoke casually that's great i think you should smoke and [ __ ] stay smoking i think it says in the scriptures the most high gave us all of these plants on a planet earth for you to use i'm saying that the word is not in there is he didn't give us all these plans for you to abuse and i abused them because i you know what's up you took a mess come on let's just keep it real with that no no and i'm not trying to bring down this shape of what you're expecting it was you've never seen half fake of course [Applause] but you know what in those times there was lacey and he knows two times i'm not talking you're going back to 85. i'm talking about i was smoking in 2010. i'm talking about i was talking about yo dude i was i had that good good everywhere i went i had good good you were talking about like you i think you said something about somebody who never bought weed i never bought weed in my life i never bought weed i never bought weed in my life i had homeboys bring me weed all the time but what i was dealing with in my personal life my professional life i had to get high because i couldn't deal with the pain that i was dealing with i didn't want to look at it i didn't want to examine it i didn't want to [ __ ] with it right so when i got into the program i started to break [ __ ] down and the first four years like i was still the people in the first four years and steve labelle has a program where they got the same [ __ ] to get you off of cocaine watch it like that but put you on marijuana yeah put you on that's called not we no no dead serious i'm not lying [Music] not doing no crazy [ __ ] on marijuana i wouldn't hear the craziest thing you did on marijuana it's not about the crazy [ __ ] i did on marijuana you're not hearing what i'm saying i'm definitely not i'm so sorry it's okay marijuana doesn't let them hear [ __ ] no and that's okay because look i'm not and i think the thing is what you're hearing is i'm not telling you that marijuana is bad marijuana is great because when i'm picturing this robert downey jr and this is a terrible reference it's not a terrible reference it's actually uh well you know robert downey jr do some [ __ ] up [ __ ] [ __ ] them [ __ ] cocaine i've never heard search doing [ __ ] up [ __ ] i just never heard of it i've never heard of it bro oh we searched you tell our guests no but it's not because it wasn't about what i did in the streets it's what it it did to me and i was faced i was faced with a choice and when i first looked at it i thought like you like i'm like oh [ __ ] are crazy you know this is all [ __ ] i remember the first time i ever went to a meeting the first meeting i ever went to there was a dude sitting across from me look like a [ __ ] racist i'm from queens he's [ __ ] big white dude he's in a cut got a big-ass beard named rich big rich definitely a truck driver dude and the first thing and the first thing i'm in my [ __ ] in this meeting saying is like yo this dude's gonna open up his mouth and i'm gonna punch him in his [ __ ] mouth i got my little jig on me i'm gonna [ __ ] i'm i'm i'm just waiting but he's the nicest guy in the world he'll help you the worst oh [ __ ] worse he opened up his mouth and he told my story he shared his experience strength and hope and it was my [ __ ] story and a dude and a human being that i would have no connection within the street he don't listen to what i listen to he don't move how i move he don't like what i like but his experience was my experience and it broke me i [ __ ] cried like a baby for 45 minutes in that meeting i couldn't even speak and i realized yo i got a [ __ ] problem but the problem ain't that right i'm the problem but it took me four years of not doing that to get to the point where okay i gotta [ __ ] look at myself real quick i gotta look at myself and i gotta really really look at what like my wife sees my children see how hard it is to make a mensie a kid to sit in front of him and say this is why i was a [ __ ] horrible father and have your children tell you yeah you're a [ __ ] you are a [ __ ] up person and it's not about forgiveness and that's the other thing people don't realize it's not about you saying i forgive you i've made amends to people that people said okay you're still a piece of [ __ ] [ __ ] you and i said thank you thank you for hearing me thank you for understanding thank you for allowing me to tell you my role and that's it and i keep it moving it's not about that it's not about that it's not about he's bounding down when the dude came to him and he said you know i want to apologize to you for [ __ ] your sister again so for me and again for me it was really a very simple process right as a cannabis agricultural advocate i'm going to take a picture wait a minute wait a minute i figured yes sir you need to get back into cannabis no not going to happen get back into it you need to get back in the candidates some way never that was very safe no i i'll tell you the only way i'll get back into cannabis is is me and my partners own a spot exactly you don't see what that's what i'm saying scott but you don't ever get it you don't see i said it earlier on your own supply brother you don't you another it's it's all it's all about it's all about understanding that one is too many and a thousand it's never okay cbd doesn't get you high but i've had the argument is is it's like i'll give you a perfect example moscato i've heard this argument all the time moscato's only like less than one percent alcohol it's a sparkling drink right just do the jungle moscato right so is that for an alcoholic a gateway to this to that to that to that right so for me i don't i can't talk for anybody else for me i don't [ __ ] with none of it because for me i'm happy with where i am today i [ __ ] feel so [ __ ] good that makes some noise [ __ ] feel good the only thing i don't feel good about is i'm a fat [ __ ] so i got to lose this weight but that's also a part of my process right because now i've you know do i like doughnuts yeah but i got to get rid of them i gotta get what are you seeing donuts no no i'm not f fn is over there so there might be a doughnut yeah there might be a doughnut or two but no one's like but but people the people you know hook me up right now but people i think make this invalid inaccurate assumption right dude i'm around all of y'all y'all are smoking i'm not triggered you know why because it ain't for me it's like when dudes go to a bar and they don't drink why it ain't for them dude i agree with you and i want to be really clear baccarat crystal clear on this all right i'm glad you can smoke and feel good about it i'm glad everybody in here that smokes and puffs trees feel good about it it don't work for me that's right that's it that's it that's it i'm on the [ __ ] noise for that and that that's real that's a real it's good but i'm gonna i'm gonna pop no i think you should gotta go with the gold i'm gonna take a shot bro three golden enough to have to platinum you know what i mean i'm gonna be can i honest you a question you can all right so this is what i i want to ask you about um about cnn right so after the war report drops you do thousand nobody expected you to do none of that right nobody's gonna go into court right right war report okay did you ever feel like there was gonna be a part of you that was missing if you went solo was there ever a part of you that was like damn when my man went away and all of that i shouldn't do an ori album i shouldn't continue making music i should hold off and wait like the way like mlp might have done or what other people might have done was ever part of that you that said you know what i gotta i gotta fall back and hold off no no that was a decisive answer um because it was like oh [ __ ] peter rosenberg that's peter you cool peter love peter all right that's my dude another great jew in hip-hop by the way all right let's let's see if he picks up i don't know what he just sent me i don't know let's see if he picks up did somebody call peter and tell him i was here does that be [ __ ] up look look at this what's going on we do hold on shut up you're gonna hold him come on sir get on the phone no no wait talk to him talk to him yeah yeah yeah you don't even know what the [ __ ] that's just some weird [ __ ] what up dude how are you sure she don't face time with men like this no no it's definitely a bad luck taco hey man did you guys start yet yeah we've been we're in the middle of it yo we're like hour three already i think we're coming up on so you know you know uh and kane is coming to see you on the 27th i know you're happy about that we got you and i'm looking forward to it man so what's up man chilling i just want you to feel awkward now i'd have to sit in this [ __ ] all right cool because you know i got jokes back so it's okay don't worry just i'm about to be down with the jewish illuminati too that's a funny story when i was doing radio in detroit i get a call to the newsroom yo sir sean is on the phone oh [ __ ] and i'm like oh i shot pick up sean pope i'm like yeah he's orthodox right wait wait so he he just got he was just maybe it was about a year and a half so i'm like oh we got a record there's got to be live streams for one second yes let me just actually one thing you can ask me whatever you want because you say you are nibbling you are out of this world and then you this word i made up that's what i made up and i'm using it it does not affect you smelling this nope drinking that no can you open up a bottle of champagne you could open it i want to film something like you from queens but listen don't [ __ ] this up he's in this brother can i just tell you guys i'm a [ __ ] jew dude um my kids my kids bar by mitzvah oh okay so 2014. okay 2014. okay okay 2014. okay you still think you got the skills oh yeah okay okay we're gonna be gonna test you out right now because as you know the skills are that when you open up a bottle of champagne all right the key is it's the jewish secret no that's not just this champagne unless you want to give me a saber and i can do a saber stuff no i don't know what are you going to cut you're going to cut the joints if you have a sabre you can do it that way so the key is right you want to hold it to the thumb okay right because you don't know if the air is coming this way right uh-huh so let's get that off that's what she said that's what she said all right okay huh a little tight that's what she said okay now trey is you want to twist and let the air out um hold on did you hear that the air it wasn't even what he popped it was the air oh that's perfect ear that's weird i'm not going to have you sorrow no i'm not gonna lie to you [ __ ] did you hear this it's like [Applause] [ __ ] let me just say something man you're a legend when we started the show like this this is where our purpose was was you know we figured that these new guys they have their other platforms you make these new records and it's great and we want to support them too i don't want to feel like a dream champs don't support the new generation we do support the new generation it's our focus it's on the generation that came before us the generation that laid it down prior to us and we want to continue to do that when we have artists like you with such an honor and such a pleasure and it's such a just a moment for us we like like the [ __ ] you were saying just now i was just falling back into fan mode like and i'm sitting back i'm like because some of this [ __ ] i knew and there's something about google and some of you i'm just like i don't even i just want to figure it out right now and it's such a beautiful moment for me i know it's such a beautiful moment for him um and we want to thank you in your face we want to you know tell you how much we appreciate for what you're doing because there's a lot of people who had your positions had your moments had your time i could have said you know what i did it i did my part let me get out of here let me take my money let me get the [ __ ] walk away let me get out of here one of the things and and i will say this you know one of the things and and i feel the same way this is a fan boy moment for me too because i'm such a fan of yours not only because thank you not only because i love being on a road with you and being a small part of a great record getting on the radio right um and doing that but what you guys have built right is what i strive for you know even with my search says podcast even in my individual podcast like i study what you do in your interviews right so that when i do my interviews i know i'm i'm ready for it like i'm trying to be the howard stern of hip-hop like i want to [ __ ] hit people over the head with [ __ ] where they go oh [ __ ] like when i hit chris rock over the head with knowing that he had he was on the spectrum of asperger's he didn't even you know like you know i mean like wow yeah i mean like you know or talking to like kamal bell about growing up in oakland and knowing [ __ ] about him that you know talking to [ __ ] roger clemens about the blood list on in 86 and how it was [ __ ] and that you know i'm saying like so like i like to get it but that is you returning what i gave to y'all right you know what i mean and that's why i'm here that's why i sat down that's why i wanted to be a part of this but you so much of a legend man like you when you look at you know but i did want to say this real quick i'm sorry because you said something when we build a new vote my philosophy was real simple when i went to the company i said i want to create my department to help artists and do integrations so that they don't have recoupment on their videos so we're going to pay for a hundred percent of their videos and only take ten percent of the time though right i remember that in three years 2008 to 2011. let's get pissed down we gave atlantic records 2.6 million dollars we gave def jam 3 million dollars we gave capital we gave sony we gave rca millions of dollars and i'm not saying we didn't make it because we did right we sold new vote to put 2011 to diago for 376 million in four years i'm about accelerating opportunity but my philosophy was simple give to the artist make sure that this company benefits artists first and foremost and then everything else will come back right you know it's like what the gods say is born to born right that that 10th degree that that that knowledge has to come back so what you guys are doing for people like me and the reason i was able to make my joint venture with sony is this is an example well we're all building off each other's backs right that's the point that we've kind of been talking about right over and over and over and it's also you know goes back to your union it goes back to all the people that are here that make this show possible your engineer the sound guys the guys that that you know compromise their time right you know the one most valuable commodity we have beyond money is time we don't ever get it back this you know whatever time it is now because i don't want to date it because it might be evergreen this concept the time we have now we we never get it back so let's manufacture our time to equate to greatness right you know what i mean because everything else is [ __ ] everything else don't mean [ __ ] yeah i mean we can drink all the wine and we want we can drink all we can smoke all the weed we want but if we don't maximize our time and doing what you're doing and doing what you know what the [ __ ] is it for no it's true that's true it's true let me ask you something real quick about searchlight because i swear to god that i've seen searchlight forever did you sell the company i closed it the only thing that exists now is searchlight publishing because there's just too much i mean we got obviously we got nas you know that we administered but we also work with ashley rose who's a amazing writer she wrote for seventh streeter chris brown bodie james who's down with griselda did the versace tape you know he's down with that kevlar great who wrote for like a gang of artists in in atlanta a man big set who's down here working with urn and working with city girls and all that [ __ ] so the only thing that exists is searchlight social publishing everything else i closed and when i had my own personal awakening i said to my wife i said you know it can't be about me anymore i got amazing kids you're amazing and if i would have spent a tenth of my time listening to my wife i would have been 100 times more successful so i said to my wife take everything she my wife owns the royalties owns the publishing owns them at everything and if i want to do something in business i talk to chantelle first i can't make any decisions until you see a black woman yep black and puerto rican get it right cool cool from elmhurst get it right yeah they asked you was gary older still invited to the barbecue and i thought that was hilarious yes so i'm with him i'm with my with my bride 33 years right so um so when i created 4mc and i made it about the kids and i made it about my wife it's because that is that is that is my son my my birth and my moon and if i would have because and and i know he got it in them if there's something about blacks and puerto ricans they got it in them my wife would she could sit down with you for five minutes five minutes she'll walk away from table and say don't [ __ ] with him all right or the opposite [ __ ] with him and i used to say this come on you don't know what no not good man beyond that beyond that and if i would have just spent a tenth of my time with her saying you're right i would have been a hundred times more successful a hundred times so now the last five years of my company with 4mc has been 50 times more successful than it's ever been in the 25 years prior because i look at her and i say what do you think and she says give me all the information she says to me and i'll start talking and she goes michael land the plane land the plane and then she says i want to meet him and if those two things don't happen deals it just just doesn't happen all right beautiful and i know you got it too make some noise for you so what's next what's next what's next [ __ ] well you know what's next honestly is timeless podcast company you know i i believe it's a complete network it's a joint venture that we did with sony and the orchard nice it is a entire organization um i believe that the the titles and the colloquialisms that we put on our culture is [ __ ] up because we are not classic we are not old school and our legend we are timeless so i call everything i do timeless timeless podcast comely timeless um distribution and and the thomas podcast company is about telling our stories but telling it in a way that will live forever right and one of my favorite things to listen to in the archives radio archives is orson welles when he did the broadcast in 1940 or the world theater of the mind and i wanted to do that times 100. and when i heard kane's story and he started blessing me because that's really what cain did i mean he blessed me with nine episodes of just [ __ ] he never talked about i said it can't be just this i got i want to hear the [ __ ] leaves rustling on [ __ ] on his block i want to hear yo he grew up across the street from divine sounds i talked to disco richie about what people do for money and we built the sound design all around that you know i'm saying so when you hear it and even create it at the show at the beginning of our show immersive sound design we have a trademarked registered sound effect that was built in a studio my man epic and sugar studios that was built to encapsulate everything you're going to hear everything that you hear so everything that we do in timeless podcast is based on immersive sound design and we have amazing partners and and you know obviously so it is there's that it's called did i ever tell you the one about podcast david tell you about big daddy kane it um premieres april 26th we got search says podcast which is just an interview you know kicking it with people we have the breaking anonymity podcast that's coming in the summer we have line for line which you're going to love it's two mcs talking about how much they influenced each other so the first season is dmc and chuck d wow here's a little and here's a little treat for you i'm gonna i'm gonna bang your head with this one get a little more sauce i'm gonna bang your head the original name of the dmc the original name daryl wasn't supposed to be in a group dmc was not supposed to be in the group it was just joey joey and jay may rest in peace right joey said hey i know you got some rhymes come to the studio just come to the studio and kick the rhymes and they did they did suck mcs right he's saying that to dmc right right russell says to joey if this doesn't work out we're going to call the group run the emcee because it'll be run but after daryl kicked his verse russell was so happy they called it run dmc for daryl mcdaniels and he blessed us on our podcast we're the first people that he that he tells the whole story that's what timeless is about man it's making this [ __ ] evergreen so that when people look back and and we're going to talk to the newer artists we're going to talk to them and you know we have another great show that we're lining up and all of that but the timeless podcast company is about this it's about making our stories evergreen making them last forever and kane is the first iteration of that make some noise i ain't gonna look like search you is my man you actually um one of the people that um sit down and you tell your story and i can co-sign it all the way through bro you are absolutely right i um i met you to achinelli i had my t-o-i record i had my couple of records and you brought me on tour we went on tour we had a beautiful time and i want to thank you to your face as a man because um there's a lot of things that you did in hip-hop that you didn't have to do and you did it and just in case you ever not felt like you got your flowers so you get your flowers that's we we invented well we didn't have the actual statement of giving the flowers we we we made it famous in hip-hop you cemented it because i'm sorry because because i could just remember like and it was so beautiful like today and yesterday i just spent these two days just watching all your videos and i like yo my man rhythm you got you got more rhythm to me like when i looked i said i don't know if i could have did certain [ __ ] that she was doing because you know we had the west coast and east coast locked up but we had to do the midwest right so russell's telling me oh there's this dude too short and i'm like oh born of mac you know i know about i know i know about short talk so we go and our first show is i don't know somewhere blank middle middle of the country somewhere right we get on stage and typical new yorker everybody knows me everybody knows third base right you're thinking this of course because i'm from new york [ __ ] everybody else right right so we're in the middle of nowhere right it's just it's just mountains and and we're doing this show and too short love it's all love yo hey player blah blah blah blah play a player yo what up man i'd go do your thing man i'll be on stage and watch you do your thing yo i'm talking about the crowd was there they were like you know they were polite you know they were polite and they kind of knew our records for you you know from bt and you're on tv right yo i went out there dancing my ass off i'm grabbing girls i'm dancing you know and crowd starts getting with us so oh everybody you know all the homeboys are not right right we leave we're like ah too short crowd's going crazy even before he touches the stage too short walked across the stage and went and that's all he did for 45 minutes and annihilated us annihilated us we got back to the bus there was like three people there and his bus couldn't even leave so i'm like oh and he must have this city unlocked we'll go to the next one it was oklahoma same [ __ ] oh god i'm dancing i mean i'm now i'm doing the worm i'm trying to get my yo i'm [ __ ] i'm like yes hop through my leg killing play style like i'm [ __ ] amped right [Applause] and that's when i knew so there was two times when i knew that new york wasn't [ __ ] that was a and b and no it was good but it is what it is but the second was was when we went on on the road public enemy so it's public enemy digital underground queen latifah native tongues right we get down south and i used to love what i used to love is i used to love to go to side of stage and see the lineup because it would usually be blah blah blah blah or kane and then kane in public enemy or third base public enemy we get down south bam rouge third base public enemy two life crew and i'm like oh there's gotta be a [ __ ] problem here and i go to chuck i said chuck they [ __ ] up they [ __ ] up the lineup he's like no no they didn't i said yeah they did man you're [ __ ] public enemy he's like watch yeah and i said watch what [ __ ] two live crew they got one record he said search shut up and watch and we got to the side of the stage we performed crowd goes crazy public enemy performs crowd goes crazy and then all of a sudden the cops come in and then all of a sudden two live crew hits the stage and luke says hey they ain't gonna let us say our word so you're gonna see him hey we want some paws and the crap and they didn't have to say one word i've never seen a dance like this in my life the upper row they were doing like [ __ ] musical chairs around chairs [ __ ] 10 000 people right so these [ __ ] did an hour because i never heard before they got to me so horny and i just and i feel the tap on my shoulder and he i turn around and it's chuck and he says you always let the hottest group close so fast forward we're in europe we're doing public enemy third base world tour we have the number one record in the country of gas phase at the time the queen of england was trying to pass a law called the poll tax p-o-l-l tax and basically what it said was parliament was trying to say okay every person in every household has to pay a flat tax of 2 500 pounds now if you're a blue-collar worker and you got mom dad two kids ten thousand pounds forty thousand a year pounds it's fine it's not a big deal but in the trini neighborhoods in brixton and south london yo they had 12 15 people living under a roof right caribbean families they couldn't afford that [ __ ] yo that's that's they don't they're not even bringing that home it was civil unrest i mean it was like black lives matter before black lives matter i mean ash [ __ ] barrels burning in the streets no poll tax all of that we go to brixton academy which is like the old one of the oldest theaters in london in brixton i look at the public enemy third base right so i'm like oh okay okay okay flavor i'll never forget this so this is this old rickety building with the base the building shaking flavor gets on top of a six stacked set of speakers and doing his flavor dance and this thing is rocking like this like i thought he was going to kill himself crowd is going crazy trainees caribbean heads everybody it's in the middle of brixton i come on stage we come on stage crowd goes crazy right we're gonna end with gas face everybody mc search i cut off the music i said yo black cat is bad and i'm screaming it as loud as i can black cat is bad luck bad guys wear black must have been the same queen that set up the poll tax get the we couldn't even finish the song they ran into the streets they i mean it was crazy next day london times third base gives the queen the gas face crazy right crazy we tour the country we come back we do wembley 160 000 people biggest show i ever seen in my life well the tennis shirt wimbledon no that's when that's uh wembley that thing this is what this is the arena all right let's go all right this is it's like a hundred and forty hundred sixty thousand people and it's now it's third base in pe right but i go out there and we do gas feeds and before my even verse comes on the whole crowd black cat is bad luck bad guys wear black must have been the same queen that set up the pole tech crowd went crazy crowd went crazy i learned from from those guys that you always let the hottest group close and when we went on tour on third base and we found out about naughty and we found about cyprus when we were on the west coast we let them close all right naughty not nor naughty on the east coast yeah but they were the hottest on the west it was hottest on the west okay gee all right now i also saw one thing too that you said you knew bushwick bail from bushwick oh yeah from brooklyn what's your bills from bushwick yeah that's why they call them bushwick bill i mean it makes sense i thought they were from texas come on man dj premier from texas too but he's from brooklyn now yo that [ __ ] me up cause we see that with jake france yeah yeah i suppose i didn't [ __ ] move man i'm from l.a [Applause] that's different like i thought that was it didn't make sense when you said it right but i was like wait a minute he's i thought they were all from texas well they well they eventually weren't from texas so you knew him from brooklyn yeah how the [ __ ] did you meet bush mcbeal and books just from being around the scene and broke like i told you i'm the [ __ ] forest gump i was everywhere like i was [ __ ] everywhere so i met i met bill um when i was with the bad boys inspect the gadget remember that record so that they have to do is we're from bed stop the other dudes were from brownsville and we just bumped in a bit wow and yeah we just became cool and then like maybe maybe six months a year later moved to houston okay what's your bills originally from bushwick yes sir that's why they call them bushwick maybe that's why they traded me up they traded premiere for bushwick bill i don't know they're however trade that's a hell of a trade it's [ __ ] great trade to me man [ __ ] it man yo let me tell you something both legends both legends rest in peace man i can't thank you so much my brother like um wow so do you know i was going to ask you not to smoke weed here right yeah it was going to happen no i know that's why yeah but i i just want to let you know to your face and i love you yeah i love you too my brother and i hope we exchange numbers and i hope you get the breakfast man yes listen listen to me bro you are what we call a legend you are what we call a hip-hop aficionado or a person that stood within a test of time and it's still standing here we want to tell you that to your face we say we talk about you like that when you're not around you want to talk about you like that when you are around the stories the like interviews it was crazy because i just came from new york and i missed my flight i'm supposed to go to la and then come here but it was great because i had i did two days study on you so i'm just keep rolling up let me just keep rolling up and i'm like i'm trying to figure out when and this would be my last question though yeah sure all right because when i can look at people time capsule of this game i can say this [ __ ] hated hip-hop here when i look at my own [ __ ] oh i know when i hated it oh wow i look at other people's [ __ ] i know when they definitively i could not if you could correct me if i'm wrong if there was ever a moment that you did just say this is not what i signed up for this is not what i wanted to be a part of when i looked at the footage that is available and the googles that is available was there ever a moment where he was just like man this is this is not it this is not what i want to be a part of or this is was it ever one no that no this culture gave me everything okay so was it any point you was disappointed you can't tell me no one no yes when when vanilla ice and hammer were on the radio and and all people i respect that we're not on the radio um that's that's that for me was heartbreaking um you know i always tried and again i don't like to use finite words but i'll use it here i always tried my best to figure out how i can contribute the best way i could even in building non-fiction and being a part of that and having a plan and going to geffen and just saying hey these guys are going to be the ramones of hip-hop like i just knew it like i just knew that they didn't need radio to be millionaires and you know sell millions of records just building a studio with necro and ill bill in the middle of brooklyn and making music um none there's never been a time i i owe hip hop everything um if it wasn't for this culture accepting me and allowing me to do what i do um your girl would be telling me to go get a size 7 shoe at nordstrom um i everything that i've done in my in my career has been around the philosophy that i was taught in the culture peace unity love and having fun and um the tenants of this culture um because you know i come from a place where there was no term as hip hop you know i heard grammak said dst say this like you know the term hip-hop was a derogatory term we didn't want it to be called that when i was coming up it was kids dancing in the street writing their names on the walls djing in parties and and rapping in in the street right there was no thing i think the new york times called it that or the new yorker we don't want to call it that but we adapted right i owe this culture everything that i don't know what i would i would be a shoe salesman i'm sure i would be selling something but i would not be where i am and i would not be able to afford the life that i have and i would not be able to afford the family that i have um but no and i still look for new music and i still love new talent and i and i still try to find i still try to get up on [ __ ] before anybody else i got a cool homeboys that we call and i'm like yo you up on marcus craft you up on blah blah blah you know i'm still that dude i'm still that you know 17 year old kid that instead of going to rock and soul instead of going to jnr music world instead of going to like you know whatever the record spot was in every place in this country i'm on the internet trying to find who's next you know like when i heard j cole's warm-up when i heard lights please i said to my homeboy i said yo this kid's about to be the greatest one of the greatest lights please if you haven't heard that record i don't know if you have or not i would strongly suggest you spend some time with that record but now what's what's your favorite moment of hip-hop without you without you participating in hip-hop oh i mean there's so many bro um the one that comes up one of my favorites is krs at the latin quarter about to perform you know the south bronx and while he's on stage melanie mel comes out holy [ __ ] yeah yeah so just so we're clear i was the first person with skylar rockman rest in peace i was there when the first time that record ever got played in a club so i'm watching krs and scott get on stage and melly mel comes behind him and wants to battle him and mel pulls out 100. and from the stage it looked like it was a pretty crumpled hunting and chris had hunted and he turned to scott and scott handed him a band a thousand he said how about a thousand better baby [ __ ] ape [ __ ] and that was that originally wasn't a disc record to queens it originally was not no not not at all it was just stating the fact right it was not a mc i have pictures of and it's in paradise's book of shannon and krs hanging out together in in the lq right you know what i'm saying and that's one of the things like you when you talk about east west and you talk about this and that like that's the streets that magnified out the audience like even even magic and red alert were cool like they weren't they didn't have beef with each other we magnified that in the street right but that's one of my favorites that's one of my favorite memories of hip-hop that i always that sticks with me you know scholar rock was like my big brother uh i'm in confuse and uh and i was i was at the i was there when krs and miss melody and scottie morris walked out of the brock's hospital when they found out that he was brain dead and they were just he just walked past me he didn't even acknowledge me and he kept mumbling the same thing we just got to move on we just gotta move on and friday was the show at madison square garden wow i'm the forest gump damn it god damn man make some noise [ __ ] mc [ __ ] so i can't walk into your house without giving you some gifts yeah so i got some gifts for y'all oh [ __ ] yep i brought some gifts so before i leave you got the steamy pack that's for you and that's for you thank you sir and that's for you and that's for you and i got two more in my pocket so this is the 30th anniversary of derelicts wow and the 30th anniversary of pop goes the weasel and the 30th anniversary of kmd mr hood so those are our challenge coins now we're dropping we're just like challenge coins challenger coins and i got stands for y'all so i wanted y'all to have them there the first off the mint so you guys are the first ones to go wow brother where's the camera ass we could uh zoom in god damn it nobody pack these up yeah i need the pizza when you're ready to do the uh yeah when you're ready to do the uh the cnn ones you let me know let's go i have no idea what we doing come out but i'm going to do this it's just a coin it's just a coin bro it's not bitcoin no it's a collector's squad not a nft not an nft but i will share this visit though and and april 15th nft nft with ernie panikoli uh-huh we're creating an nft of his infamous biggie on in the jeep image you want to give him like a quick run down the entertainment yeah so an nfc nfc stands for non-fungible token it's a digital basically a digital imprint or digital code thank you and that digital code is encrypted with a watermark it's a one-of-one authenticated by the blockchain right and you can either buy it on an auction either cash or crypto or both the one that we're doing on april 15th will be ethereum we've partnered with ethereum to do that if you're unfamiliar go to openc.com and we will help those who want to get involved open up a crypto wallet right because that's the other part of the education is if you want to get wealth real wealth then you have to understand cryptocurrency right so coinbase is one of the apps to use right openc so we are helping those who want to be involved in this nft auction um create their cryptocurrency wallet so you can do that and then we'll be doing others yeah towards each other we're actually working on something alright good that's great that's great well if you really want to get some money you holler at me let's take some pictures and take a drop and this is it man you

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Views: 680,226

Rating: 4.8406324 out of 5

Keywords: REVOLT, TV, music, rap, r&b, hip hop, MC Serch, Rapper, 3rd Bass, Queens, MC Hammer, Def Jam, T Bone Lemke, White Monster, Golden Age Hip Hop, The cactus Album, Chubb Rock, Spike Lee

Id: TnBJpOzhZ6U

Length: 151min 47sec (9107 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/4_Better_Or_Worse]

I thought it was TK Kirkland who told him to sign with Columbia and told him to make Illmatic

[u/sourcreamonionhummus]

I've been meaning to watch this but it seems like they talk about a lot of the same shit that was covered in his interview with vlad, which was one of the best ones I've seen

edit: nevermind this first hour is fantastic. it does touch on some stories I've heard before but it's different. this is great, and serch is an all time great interview about NY rap

[u/MonolithJones]

I love how Serch calls himself "the Forrest Gump of hip-hop" LOL. This is such a great interview.