A Geek History of Time - Episode 208 - The History of Hip Hop with Dr. Manuel Rustin Part II

Episode Date: April 22, 2023

So thank you all for coming to Cocktalk. He has trouble counting change, which is what the hands think. Wait, wait, stop. Yes, but I don't think that Dana Carvey's movie, um, coming out at that same time, was really that big a problem for our country. I still don't know why you're making such a big deal about September 11th, 2001. Fucking hate you. Well, you know, they don need to be anathema, but they are definitely on different ends of the spectrum.

Oh boy, I have a genetic predisposition against redheads, so. Because? Yeah, because you are one. Right. Yeah, combustion, yeah, we've heard it before. The only time I change a setting is when I take the hair trimmer down to the nether reaches, like that's the only time. Other than that, it's all just a two.

I'm joking, I use feet. After the four gospels, what's the next book of the Bible? Acts. Okay, and after that, it's Romans. It's a chapter of the Romans. Yeah, okay, and if you look at the 15th chapter of Romans, okay, you will find that it actually mentions the ability to arm yourself That's why it's AR worth it. This is a T-Castry ofT.C.A.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T.T a barbecue grill for the first time in five or six months. And I wound up fixing steaks for myself and my wife

and my son and a guest that we had over. And because my son is only five, there's no way on God's green earth, even though he is my son, that he's going to be able to eat a full-sized steak. So after I took them off of the grill, I played it everything up, and I took kind of the center part of the steak

that was air quotes, his, and I put it on a plate with his asparagus. And I forgot that we live with a pair of ambush predator slash scavengers in our house. We have two cats and I just I was in a hurry to get everything out on the table and I didn't do anything with the remainder of the steak that my son was eating. And it took until remarkably enough, it took until after we had all finished eating and we were sitting around the table chatting that I heard a clatter from the kitchen. And I went in and it was not the cat I expected.

We have one smaller, slinkier, generally kind of more clever cat. It was not her. It was our big orange dipshit who had jumped up onto the counter. I have a name, sir. No, no, no. And now you completely derailed me.

No. Jumped up into the kitchen. Yeah, jumped up and seized the stake and had jumped down onto the floor. I came into the kitchen. He saw me coming and he moved with more speed than one would expect an orange stripe tub of lard to move into the hallway and I tried to grit. He actually swiped at me when I tried to take this away from him. Like I grabbed the stake up off the ground.

He is normally a lover and not a fighter, but he had gotten a hold of something good enough that God damn it, he was not going to give it up. And so yeah, I witnessed this complete personality change in one of my two cats over beef. He literally had beef. So yeah, that's what happened earlier in my evening. What have you got going on? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin and a US history teacher up here in Northern California. I'm going to start tonight with a little history lesson in 1881 Charles Gato shot James Garfield in the best Luckily, he was well-marbled speaking of beef and The bullet did not kill him outright

The result was he had a team of doctors poking and prodding him all summer long killing him slowly and So he was convoressing He was still shitty enough to, I think, make sure that a Native American leader was starved to death, but he also, because he's presidential. Yeah. Well, yeah. But he also was convalescing and not running the country. At the same time, that summer, Congress went home and so did the Supreme Court. And the whole country, I'm not saying, ran well, but I am going to say, ran as it would have any way if any of them had been around.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so this week, I had an administrator down in Southern California at a conference. We are three vice administrators short at present. And the person who's an administrator, not quite an administrator, but has mild administrative duties was also gone for a luncheon. And the administrator who is leaving us. And so still transitioning out was coming in late every day because he had to handle other things at his new site. Anyway, it felt like 1881 all over his word. Yes. Okay. So, I'm there, they're, they're layers to my, to my level of shock here. to my level of shock here. How many vice principles do you have on your site? Well, a school our size normally should have no fewer

than three and frankly, probably would do better with four depending on what things they need them to do. Okay, yeah. Okay, all right. And then a principle. Yeah, yeah, so. All right, so yeah you're and then a principal. Yeah, yeah, so All right, so yep, so Wow speaking of benign neglect and here's the thing my educational career started with

What's the word I'm looking for in competent neglect? At charter school So there any other way charter schools get operated? No, well, okay, no, there's malignant neglect and outright. And I dare say that there may be a good one out there. I don't know. But, but I started with such neglect that I had to create all of my own curriculum and all of my own stuff. And so now when somebody steps in, I get really touchy about them trying to, as I see it, interfere. They might well be trying to help, but then we end up in periods like this where there is literally no human capital, no personnel. And I'm like, okay, cool.

I know exactly how to do this. And other people are like, right justly indignant. And that's fair, I think that's a valid response. But I'm sitting there going like, yeah, oh no. Like what are, it's almost like when people, you know, said, well, what are you gonna do if you defund the police and who's gonna show up 20 minutes late to a burglary and tell you

you should have had better locks? Like, what are you gonna do? Like expect to live through a traffic stop? Like come on. Like, yeah, that's kind of how I see most visualized that. Yeah. Yeah. So, Wow.

Anyway, but you know, we do have people coming to us. We have hired a few and that's, that's good. And I'm looking forward to being cautiously optimistic and training them on what a contract is. So. Okay. But yeah, Dan, I actually get to welcome back our guest from last week, Dr. Manuel Rustin, who was teaching us about hip hop last time. And I saw him nodding his head because he and I worked together a hundred years ago, at a site where I think when I got hired there, you'd been there a year. And I think they had what, four admin, four under admin, plus the principle at the time. I think that's right.

Yeah. And without throwing anybody under the bus or anything like that, is there anything inaccurate of what I've said 20 years later? I'm trying to remember who the like assistant principles were at the time or whatever they were called because it was like a rotating cast of characters. Right. Yeah. Yeah. When I first got there, one of them was had to, he was like an army reserve or something. So then he went to Iraq that shows how long ago.

As well as this is like, this is before the, this is before the surge if folks can remember that. So then eventually he came back and they didn't have a spot for him. So he took the district to court. Yeah, it was a rotating cast of characters, man. Wow. Yeah, that is, that is insane.

That's, that's nuts. Yeah, so there you go. Not much has changed. Other than, you know, we've we've got more kids who've come back having served in an undenigable war that just recently ended. So yeah. So anyway, onto more cheery things. So apparently there was a huge war between the West Coast and the East Coast hip hop artists. And they all met at the Mississippi River, talked out their problems, had a rap battle, if you will, and parted his friends. That's at least what American Anthem told me in the primary document section of the textbook.

And apparently it was moderated by Gilbert Godfried and Eminem emerged the King of Hip Hop. Did I miss anything or is that pretty much how it went? I wish. I wish. I just wanna say how absolutely on point that description of any major textbooks description of any historical event in our country. Yeah, actually is.

Yeah, let's pull in two white guys and say that they won and one of them had nothing to do with anything in the other years. Yeah. You know, years later, but Jesus. Yeah. Violence was felt on both sides. And yeah. All right, so, uh, Manuel, thank you so much for coming back actually and and hopefully, um, teaching us, uh, let's see, we got into the 90s. So I, I dare say that's roughly halfway to, to the present. So I think we go a pace,

we'll probably finish up with understanding stuff contemporary early. So. Yeah, certainly. And I would just add, since I didn't clarify last episode between terminology regarding hip hop versus rap, just to, because you brought up how the DJ to your, from your observation,

it seemed like that faded away late 80s would spend around some others. And yeah, originally, so hip hop, that term is more inclusive of things, elements beyond just the rap music part of it. So usually when someone, someone who's well versed in the art form uses the term hip hop, they're talking about the elements of hip hop and that four elements of hip hop are the DJ, which was

at the heart of its creation. The the rap being or the emceeing, which of course is the most well-known aspect of it, graffiti, which was a big part of the culture early on, and then the break dancing, which this was all created for the dancing at first in the first place. So those four elements, especially the more old school folks, the folks who are really, really heavy on the 80s and 70s era hip hop are really big on those elements and really take offense to like hip hop

anniversary tributes and this and that that like ignore all that. So the Grammys had a big 50th anniversary of hip hop performance and all these different rappers from different eras came on and you know I saw a lot of people a lot of hip hop heads mad that they didn't represent any DJing or any graffiti art during that time because those were elemental. So rap in 90s was pretty much rap. That is strictly the music and specifically the rapping on a beat. So you know rap is part of hip hop. Folks use the terms sometimes interchangeably. So when definitely when it comes to big e and two-pock and the conflict and what happens after it's pretty much rap music. Like DJ is a, DJing is a very much lost

art form graffiti. Definitely a really big art form around the world, but not necessarily associated with rap music the way it used to be and dances everywhere, but not associated with the music in the same kind of way that it used to be. So, just wanna clarify that. Yeah, actually, let me ask you a few questions about that, then would you say that the graffiti and the break dancing specifically have pulled away from hip hop and kind of created their own,

kind of created themselves own, kind of created them, re-created themselves as their own art forms separate and away from that. Or is it still umbrella under? No, I would say separate in a way when you talk about street art now, like, you know, whether it's like big, you know, big, known folks like Banksy or, you know, local folks, it's, it's not really associated in the same kind of way with the culture of hip hop And I think as soon as it started leaving New York and spreading outside of New York that element started to to to fade some I mean New York is a group is a perfect canvas for graffiti with subway trains and all that and you know That's not necessarily necessarily the case in in a lot of other cities that

That we're making the music. Well, and you mentioned Bansky, which he often gets associated with more with punk rock, as well, a DIY culture, because of the way that he printed his stuff. And I'm thinking also maybe Shepherd fairy, although I guess Shepherd fairy is not as much a graffitist, but although no, the obey stuff that started as graffiti. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like print, print made graffiti. Yeah.

But yeah, and it reminds me of what our guest Jason said about how, you know, people, you know, there's a phrase that's so punk rock. And he says, you know, that's in many ways that ethos is the hip hop ethos now. There is there is a DIY culture to to both in in the beginning certainly. There is the capitalization of it by cynical people who put together bands to ape the sound of what was happening in the scene, something from nothing, as you'd said. And then you do have the ties to graphic art, you know, graffiti and what have you. So that's interesting. There's less dancing in punk rock.

But that like that ethos, again, those those two things, they seem to run really parallel. It's interesting that you don't have that much capitalized on successful crossover financially between those two because they do seem to run on a lot of the same fuel. Ed, were you going to say something there? Well, just talking about the graphic art, portion of it, what I made the individual artist that I made that I immediately think of as Keith Herring, would he fit in with that,

did he fit under that umbrella, or was it just contemporaneous in time? And I'm, I'm, was he the chalk guy? The one that did like the frenetic movement, like characters. Yeah. Do you? Yeah.

Yeah, I'm not sure. Certainly when it comes to the graffiti and street art aspect of hip hop, the, like the Godfather of that, as far as hip hop goes Boscoyot and once Boscoyot's works started to be shown in high class New York establishments and really after that kind of as far as the music kind of music took off without bringing the art along with it, from my vantage point, I'm sure somebody out there would listen and be like, wow, dare you.

But as a West Coast person, I'd never graffiti. West Coast graffiti, my association with it is gangbing. And it's not music in our art. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, B. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Basky was the next name I was going to ask about. So okay. And he died famously of an overdose in the late 80s. So. So do we see and that's interesting and that might actually serve as a good bridge to to what we were going to open with. Do we see that less so with break dance artists, but more so with graffiti artists?

Do we see their deaths as being the thing that helps fade them out of the larger milieu of hip hop? Or is it just that the music is so much more easy to capitalize on it? Yeah, I think it's just the spread of the music and it being so easy to capitalize on and I mean New York spent who knows how much money trying to crack down on on the sorts of graffiti that were big in the 70s and early 80s like whole cars being painted a whole subway cars being painted back then.

So I'm sure that had a lot to do with it too. Sure, sure. Yeah, that's the Ed Koch era, if I recall. Yeah, and oh, dingins, right, Gerald Dingins. And then, I mean, eventually, I'm this is getting into the 90s, but Giuliani and the, you know, broken windows leasing. Yeah, but no, if you look at, like I said,

if anybody searches or looks for a 70s era, Bronx photography, I mean, it's just the interior of subway cars, where just like you could tell what the original color was of even the interior, because every every inch was covered and like I said buildings and just burn down

buildings everywhere and just a real hellscape for you know for a freaking major U.S. city. Yeah, but yeah. It's interesting too because you see the same thing happening in Berlin uh toward the mid to late 80s. But Berlin's city fathers did something very different once the wall fell.

They invited all the artists. They said, please come and squat because we don't have the money to keep the stuff up. So could you do something with it? And Berlin's always been an art town. It's not been a commerce town necessarily. Whereas New York's very much been a art town. It's not been a commerce town necessarily. Whereas New York's very much been a commerce town. So the cutting edge against art and toward authoritarianism seems to make a lot more sense in New York. But Berlin absolutely responded to graffiti in a very different fashion. in a very different fashion. Interestingly, Rudy Giuliani, remember, he led the police riot. Yeah. Yeah, I've been thinking from the first moment, Giuliani got mentioned. I was,

oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The guy that's right at it with the cops. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Manuel, do you know of the police riot in New York? I don't think so. No. Oh, so they they're protesting Darryl Dinkins because he put together a commission that essentially would look at and I covered this in God, I forget what episode. Um, but could have been the Punisher actually because Marvel is housed there. Um, but he essentially the police protested that there could be an investigation into the racial aspects of them beating down civilians and that they would actually be

internal investigations. It wasn't even outside investigations. It was like internal investigations and the police went apes shit and and like thousands of them rioted and attacked people like as though You know as as though somebody won a sports game But they rioted and one of the people who grabbed microphone and spoke on their behalf and against the I believe first black mayor of New York was Rudolph Giuliani. So which, you know, you got a brand of project. Yeah. So yeah,

fuck Rudy. Yeah. So all right. So it's 1990. Let's see, we talked about Dallas, all we talked about, um, a tribe called Quest. Uh, So the early 90s, you're seeing other branches, but at the same time, what seems to be growing is this beef that is happening between East and West Coast. If I recall, and I could be wrong, but Tupac is originally from the New York area, right? Oh, yeah. His mom's born in New York City,

lived there for a couple years and then moved down to Baltimore and spent really his formative years there and attended Baltimore School for the Arts and then came to the West Coast Marin City outside of World Bay area. And I think by then he was already like, he was in high school.

I think he might have already been in like 10th or 11th grade. Yeah, his mom was actually part of that. You remember Ed, we talked about in the V series, that group of women who were selecting bombing targets and bombing the shit out of things saying like, hey, we will keep bombing stuff unless you stop bombing other people. His mom was one of the people who was tied to one of those groups. And it was named, it was named for like the same birthday as Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X.

Oh, okay. It was like that. I want to say I forget, I forget what their birthday is, but it was like it was M13 or something like that. Like for me 13th. Okay. But his mom was tied to that. She, she's been a, what America would consider a radical. Yeah. And she has been very, very involved in politics in the, in the New York area,

certainly all the way up and down the beltway. And so yeah, he's got New York roots. So yet he ends up being considered the avatar for West Coast, I guess, in this thing, is that right? Yeah, very unfortunately too. And all this happened so quickly. I mean, I think folks, T-Pock has such a large place and hip-hop history and really just, you know,

American culture that folks kind of don't realize everything, everything you ever heard of related to Tupac all happened within this band like five years. Like his first album came out in 1991 and he was killed in 96. So everything from his appearances and movies to the multiple albums to all all the conflicts, being shot, being on trial for things. All of that was just five years, which when I tell students that I'm like, Drake has been around for almost three times as long as two-buck, like trying to put it in perspective, it's like it's wild how intense his short life was.

But yeah, certainly is the East Coast guy who really respected the East Coast a lot. Up until he felt that New York artists, specifically, were trying to set him up to be killed essentially. He got shot outside of a studio and blamed Natorious Big for being a part of it. Just so happened, Natorious B.I.G. released a song. This is before his big debut, but released a song called Who Shot You. And that was

interpreted as like a almost like poking fun at the fact that he had Tupac shot up. But, yeah, you was supposed to agree that it was recorded before Tupac was even shot and it had nothing to do with that. But, yeah, they had been friends. They've got, they've got music together. They were on a track together and it was all good until it wasn't.

Yeah, it was, wasn't there like a robbery in the lobby of the studio or something? And then Tupac got shot a couple times during that. Yeah, yeah, and notorious big and Sankones were upstairs in a studio. Right. Tupac is his side of the story is that he, that when they came down the elevator,

that like they were, they had to look on them that suggested that they were kind of surprised that he survived and that they were worried about the fact that he had survived. And there's, you know, the Shankhomes and, well, you know, P. Diddy and the Tories big. Seems to have changed their story a couple of times, but there's no consensus on

exactly what it was or who did it. I never believed that like Diddy or Biggie had anything to do with it. I thought maybe they knew who did it and just like decided to stay out of it, but there's never been consensus about that. There's consensus about who killed Tupac in Vegas, but there's not really consensus about really whether or not Natori's big ever had any like real ill will towards Tupac. Now also, I mean Tupac is working with death row out in the West Coast, so that's Shug Night, right? Eventually, because after when he got shot and when he was escorted, when he was on a stretcher being taken out of Quad Studios or the basement of Quad Studios, and that's when he saw Tuba, when he saw P Diddy and in the Tories big standing there looking like there's suspicions

or something. The next day he appeared in court for sexual assault case and they got sent to Clayton Correctional Facility Upstate. So he went to prison and then that's, he was in prison when me against the world came out, which is my favorite, one of my favorite rap albums of all time, my favorite two-block album for sure. And then while he was in prison,

he got recruited by death row, by a shoonite specifically. So as soon as he got out of prison, he was fully focused on revenge and rivalry with notorious Viagee. And death row records was just like the freaking. It was the perfect place for him to be for that, but to me, it was just the most unfortunate place for him to be because he certainly didn't have people around him, not there, at least, who were willing to talk sense to him and keep him on a healthy steady track.

At that time, he's what? In his early 20s, mid 20s? Early 20s. I think he's like 25 or 26 when he gets killed. And that's, that's, you know, about a year to win. Yeah, you know, he's, yeah, him and notorious B.I.G. They were both killed. They were just 25.

And in my head, they're like so grown because I was like young at the time. But thinking back, I'm like, man, these are some kids, man. Like I know 25 grown adult, but like, man, just so, so, so, young. I mean, we met when I was 27. So I assume you were, I, I, I, I haven't, I, you haven't met you. So, um, if we met what, like, uh, 2005. So yeah, I was 20. I was 25. Yeah, so I was two box H. Yeah, it was just a baby.

It feels so long ago. Ed, you would have loved his wardrobe. You guys actually dress very similarly. Oh, yeah. Yeah, lots of ties, lots of... I'm the only one left at my school site that everywhere is a tie. And I don't do it every day, but a couple of times a week. Yeah, I don't.

I still... As soon as I... Because when we first met, I was still just wearing buttoned down shirts. But once COVID hit, I don't fit in those anymore. And I'm not about to buy more. I think COVID changed everything. For I think that's when the last of the like, you know, quote unquote, professional type, dressing teachers at my school site, I think COVID was like, that was it. Yeah, y'all are a dime breed. I lent somebody a tie and he's like, oh, do you need it back?

I'm like, I don't anticipate needing it back ever. I think you're welcome to keep it. But yeah, I'm T-shirt and jeans now, because that's what fits. So it's comfortable. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so this, you know, It's comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, uh,

this, this, you know, I graduated in 96. So he gets, he gets killed in, in my, my senior year. Senior year. Um, and Biggie also gets killed within a year of that, right? Yeah. Yeah. He gets killed March 9th. Um, so yeah, two pockets killed in September. And that next March? Yeah, he gets killed March 9th. So yeah, Tupac gets killed in September. And that next March is when Biggie got killed. So that occupies a huge spot in my brain. Just,

you know, not damn 95 96. I mean, that's a hell of a year. But so they, yeah, that occupies a huge spot in my brain. So pardon me for fixating on this, but also like the media, like you said, it was a lot of media hype about it. Like it feels like if it was not reported on the way that it was as that this was, and you know, MTV did this as well. But, you know, if it was not as hyped up in the media, then it could have had a chance to have gotten settled

or gone away. I agree a thousand percent. Vibe Magazine was like the big magazine at the time. It was Vibe and the source. The source was specifically just rap music, but Vibe Magazine founded by Quincy Jones or at least in part by Quincy Jones. Was rap and R&B, but they both of them just had issue after issue, special issue, special

issue featuring like the West Coast perspective and then, you know, something in the interview that's like this in the East Coast. And then then comes the East Coast issue and it was up back and forth that was just like just so, so, so hyped up and the thing about it is and you know obviously looking back on it, you know, folks could see and I think most folks would agree that the conflict between Tupac and Biggie had literally nothing to do with geography, nothing to do with the actual East Coast or West Coast anything. It was a personal beef.

And like you said, like Tupac was from the East Coast originally, like he, you know, on that me against the world album that came out while he was in prison, he has a song called Old School and it's all just given love and flowers to old school hip hop artists and the originators. And it was all like East Coast stuff. It was like just a loving

tribute to the history of rap up into that point. So this East Coast West Coast stuff. But then, you know, folks capitalized, you know, artists from both coasts jumped in with their, hurling their slander, you know, Snoop Dogg and the Dog Pound that had a video, had a song called New York, New York, and in the video, Snoop Dogg is literally like, he's like a giant, like, almost like a Godzilla stomping through New York. And he's literally kicking down skyscrapers in New York. So it's just like, well, shit, man, like, that's not helping. So yeah, it got it got way out of hand, man, it got way out of hand.

Wow. And as somebody who's not really claimed anywhere that he's ever lived, it's to me, oh look, he's destroying a city. But like to New Yorkers, that's our town. Yeah, that's so disrespectful. Yeah. That's, I can't imagine being mad that somebody like, you know, took a dump on the tower street bridge, you know,

I'd be like, oh no, there's, you know, but again, that's, I don't claim this place. And then there's flare ups in person too. So like, at source awards, at like, But again, I don't claim this place. And there's flare ups in person too. So like, at source awards, at like all the different televised awards, the source awards specifically, when Death Row, one of that,

I forget who I might have been Dr. Sherry, somebody won some award, and then the whole Death Row entourage went up there and Schadenhye, who was the founder of Death Row Records and executive producer of everything, he was basically saying to the whole death row entourage went up there and and shouldn't know he was the founder of death row records and executive producer of everything. He was you know he was basically saying to the whole crowd like if anybody wants to um uh it's tired of your producers jumping in your videos doing this and then he was talking about puffy and how uh p.d.d. he was like always making it about him. He was like you know come to death row this and that and it was just a real in your face like you know trash trash in the east coast trash in specifically bad boy records which is the It was like, come to death row this and that. And it was just a real in your face, like,

trash in the East Coast, trash in specifically bad boy records, which is the record label that Big E was on. And so there's a lot of in person, like behind the scenes, behind the stage fights or almost fights. And it was just a, it was just really ignorant for no reason. Okay. I'm glad cell phones settings is back then.

I can't imagine what kind of a cell phone footage, social media, craziness would have we'd have. Oh, that's the TikTok atmosphere. Oh, God. Or that like, oh man. Yeah, the comment sections and all that. It would have been. Yeah.

Okay. So, I'm trying to, I'm trying to piece this together. So you said that Tubaq had been the one that Dan Quail specifically called out at a time where he's giving all the love and talking about all the unity. Yeah. He goes upstate. He's for sexual assault. He comes out and like you said, he's completely focused on revenge.

That's clearly a shift, right? Like did his music shift as well? Kind of. Certainly, his album that came out after prison, All Eyes On Me, which was a double CD, which was like a big deal at the time. Definitely had some like a aggression on it for sure, but it also had like just, you know, some of his more just regular like party type music. And some, a few songs that were, you know, quote unquote, had social meanings to them. But then he would drop like really fiery distrax,

the most fiery, which I I hate but like it's it's a hit song and people you know even my students love it hit him up and in it like he takes a beat that notorious bi g's protege group was on for a song called, by junior mafia called Get Money. He takes that same beat and basically just destroys, just destroys Biggie Smalls, saying I slept with your wife, your fat, your dish, your bad. It's like extremely explicit, extremely vulgar. The music video, they have actors portraying Biggie and Puff Daddy.

And it's just like a... I think in the video, there's even a scene where he busts into their office and they're all scared of him thinking that too much. Thinking that too much to kill them. He reaches in his arm and he takes something out. It's just like a lighter. It's like, why are you so scared? It was just all this...

Sure. It was bad, man. But it was a hit song. People love it. And I just, I hate that song because it reminds me of my favorite artist when I was that age being killed. Like I remember that, there was no coming back after that.

You don't do that to somebody. And he didn't even get killed by East Coast folks anyways, but I just felt like it was inevitable. That was gonna end bad. So he gets killed in Vegas. Yep. Okay. And you said it's agreed upon who killed him. Yeah, pretty much agreed upon.

And it's one of those, you know, this conspiracy theory is about who might have put him up to it, but it's pretty freaking obvious. So as there's a Tyson fight and there's surveillance footage showing Tupac and his whole entourage, there's a in the lobby of the MGM, there's a local Los Angeles gang member there, Southside Crypt, which is important because death row records should

night and a lot of the folks there were more closely associated with the bloods. And this Crypt, they had some existing beef. Anyways, they see him in the lobby and Tupac himself and his old entourage beat his ass like right there on the lobby, stomp him and just leave him there just a mess in the lobby. And a couple hours later, that same night, a car pulls up and shoots into the car that Tupac was riding in with a should-night in it. And pretty much everybody agrees that Orlando

was at least one of the people in the car. And it's like pretty freaking obvious. You beat down somebody when they're by themselves, but they're not actually by themselves, because they are a creep and they got people. Of course, he's gonna spend the whole rest of the night trying to find you. That's just basic.

So there's, there isn't much to speed there, but there is dispute about whether or not he was actually paid by Puffy or whether or not that's like a, you know, a false flag situation where it really was something else, but the Orlando thing, because Orlando ended up being killed, he himself got killed not long after that. Oh, so yeah. Okay.

So it's, wow. And so Shugn Knight was in the car. Yeah, he was driving, and the shooters pulled up on two box out on the passenger side and shot it into it. So I remember growing up and people speculating, like, oh, Shug Knight was behind it, because Shug Knight wanted to leave Death Row, because Shug Knight was robbing him,

Shug Knight was notoriously terrible in terms of taking care of his artists and it's an app, I'm like, right. And he's not going to be in the gyro seat and trust somebody else to shoot like, sure, generally speaking, gang members aren't very good marksman. And no, he's going to trust there. They're freaking life, uh, something like that.

But, uh, yeah, of course, nobody was ever arrested because nobody talks. So, and wasn't Shug Knight hit in yeah, of course nobody was ever arrested because nobody talks. So, and wasn't sure tonight hit in the in it was grazed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, grazed in a head. Yeah, so yeah, I was yeah, I'm like, he wasn't behind it. But there is a heart. It's there. The album that came out the first album that came out after two bar got killed, Maccavelli, the seven day theory, and it came out right after he died,

obviously he recorded it ahead of time. And the Seven Day Theory, and between him getting shot in him dying, was like seven days. And when you play the album, the very first intro, there's like crowd noise, because it's like a crowd walking and stuff, and then like a news report starts or whatever.

And in that crowd noise, you hear someone very clearly say, shooge shot me. It's like clear as day, shooge shot me, shooge, like it's clear as day. So like as a young person, like we were all like in the cafeteria, like you heard that, you heard that, like he knew he was going to get shot, he knew that or like a producer is trying to tell us that we should um and years later like the original sample that was sampled from some movie or something it was just crowd noise and some movie from like the 80s and you hear it there too. So it's like okay they didn't put that in there that that's been there since like the 80s. It's the hip hop Paul is dead like yeah so on the Beatles if you if you play certain tracks slowed down backwards sideways looking at the east when the sun is setting

With a lamprey eel between your toes. You can hear it very clearly say Paul is dead So yeah, it's it's okay. So so that happens that absolutely ceases everybody's imagination probably all the pearls get clutch amongst the white liberal intelligentsia and the conservative intelligentsia just said C.I. Told you so. And then, like you said, in March, Biggie gets killed. Is he killed as a clear revenge thing or is it also this is also a possible

local gang beef that that blows up? No, it was pretty obvious and no one's ever been arrested or anything like that but he was killed in L.A. He had been warned by people not to come to L.A. He had a song called Going Back to Cali and it essentially was saying like they love me out there. Like he was essentially him, you know, bless heart, but him thinking that like you know folks see that it wasn't really like the thing between me and two pop Wasn't really what it was hyped up to be like I'm just I'm you know because he he never released any kind of a direct This is the two pop or anything like that. So, so he was out here promoting his new album.

He was at, after party for the vibe awards. So there's the source, then there's vibe again. And after party for the vibe awards, which is at the Peterson Automotive Museum, we'll share in Fairfax anybody in LA and there was that intersection and just near Cedar Sinai, which is where they took them after he got shot and Yeah, he was in the car. He was in their SUV waiting for whatever and someone pulled up and shot into the car and killed him

March 9th 1990s what 7th 1997 September 96 was two pocket and March of the next year was, um, was biggie. And, um, Nova's ever been arrested and there weren't even any real leads or anything for, like, dozens of years. But more recently in the last, like, 10 years, a lot of folks have, um, been able to connect some dots between some off-duty LAPD folks who are working for Shognyt. It doesn't help that, like like that was the time of for

anyone familiar with the Rampart scandal, which is what the movie training days loosely based on, just like out of pocket, terrible, terrible, just incredibly criminal policing, and some of those same folks being, you know, making money on the side working for Shug Knight and whoever the hell had money to pay. But being directly being themselves directly tied to the crypts right, not the bloods I should say. Yeah, yeah. So remember, right? Yeah. Yeah, so like, you know, it seems just like the who shot two pockets seems pretty obvious. Like it doesn't take a genius to figure out like you

stomped somebody out in a hotel room, a violent person. They're going to inflict or try to inflict violence back for Biggie, like, you know, you're in the West Coast and all these criminal elements still hate you. And whether or not you had anything to do to park, they're not just going to let you be out here celebrating and partying out after a award show. So, So yeah, that looks like what did him in and just so true. And then of course, after the fact afterwards and everybody's like, you know, how do we let it get out of hand? You know, all these coming together at awards shows, I think goes MTV Music Awards where Biggie and two-pots mothers joined together to, you know, to visually represent

a coming together in peace and all that stuff. But it's like, it's just sad because like, you can see it happen. I was a kid. I was a kid. I was a teenager at that time, but like, you can see it unfold. And two-pots wrapped about it all the time about him knowing he's gonna die young and he had a music video come out right after he died for For a song where like the opening scene he's outside He's coming out of a movie theater with Poking would find the actor and they're like laughing and stuff and someone comes up and Shoots and kills Tupac and the whole music video he's rapping from heaven and that came out after he was killed like within a month after He was killed. I ain't mad at you as the song. So it's just like, we all saw this coming, man. And that just makes it that much more tragic, especially for me. I love Tupac. I love big

II of the boat for that. And it was just like, what the hell? Like where else does this happen in music? You know, in that kind of way, it was just very, I was, yeah, I'm still upset about it. I'm still upset about it. Yeah, no, totally. Fair enough. That's meaningful. Yeah, I'm in no way is this meant to trivialize or minimize it. I genuinely am relating to it. I'm still mad that the Montreal screwdriver happened in 97.

And that's just, you know, that that's Brett Hart got screwed out of the title and Sean Michaels, you know, was a part of it and the whole thing that happened, it still bothers me because those two were my two favorite guys. And their rivalry was amazing and they told beautiful stories and Brett absolutely got screwed. And it is a very polarizing thing amongst wrestling fans. So I genuinely do get it. Like whatever your art form is, when you see two people that you have a lot of respect

for as artists and, you know, their rival re-ends up being the undoing of at least one of them, if not both. It's not good. It sucks. So. Okay, so what did Quincy Jones ever say about any of this? Since you said he started at least at one of these,

I mean, he's one of the Godfathers of music in a lot of ways. And what did some of the older hip-hop artists say about any of this? Was there much reaction or is it a lot more of the how to could it get to this? We need to do better and let's move on. Yeah, it's just a lot of the how to get this bad. Like, come on, we're better than this and that.

And really, the East Coast West Coast thing was all the way over after that. Like, there was no, not even any hinting of there being any P for Ryder. Because it was never really there. Like, music artists, like I was bumping W even any hinting of there being any P for Ryver, because it was never really there. Like, music artist, like I was bumping Wuteng and Biggie and Tupac and E4, all at the same time, like most folks didn't freaking care because it was manufactured. It was just, there was nothing really to it. Quincy Jones said, yeah, that's interesting. I never actually looked into if he ever said anything about it, because I know he founded Five Magazine and that was his freaking media,

but like, I don't know, I don't know, money off of this. So, yeah, yeah, but I don't know the extent to which he was involved in any kind of editorial decisions or anything like that, but yeah, I have a stack of those magazines in my classroom too, a teacher who retired, a English teacher,

she saved them all. I had a subscription at the time, but I don't know where they went. But yeah, it's just like going back through them and seeing like, okay, here's the two-buck issue, and here's the big issue, and here's back to a death row issue. Now they're looking tough, and now they're talking about this, and it's just like, what are we doing? What are we doing? Wow. And so, I mentioned Quincy. I'm actually going gonna also bring up, so at this time Will Smith is huge in the movies too. And so you're talking before about the difference between rap and hip hop in many ways like he is mainstreaming and a sanitized aspect of hip hop into feature films and making handover fist money. I think four years in a row, he was the top draw at the box office.

Yeah. And he wanted to say, yeah, to Quincy Jones. And it wasn't he, I want to say, I think he was on stage when, um, Biggie and two-pots mothers came together. I want to say, um, it was Will Smith who was like the, you know, whatever. I'm like 99% sure it was Will Smith who was up there with them. And then later, Will Smith, you know, he goes back into music and you know, get in jigger with it, going to Miami and all that.

And he famously, he got a Grammy and he was like, you know, I don't have to curse in my rhymes to sell records. Almost like, you know, shaming these young kids for being so violent and look what it did to Tupac and Biggie and, respectability politics too. Big time. Yeah, look, I'm acceptable to white America. Big time. Yeah, look, I'm acceptable to white America. Yeah. So actually, wanna go back, we did an episode on Ace of Base

because as it turns out, there are some seriously weird connections to white supremacy with Ace of Base. Wow. Yeah, and one of the reasons that Swedish pop music got so big was because boys to men was so big. reasons that Swedish pop music got so big was because boys to men was so big. Because you had these men who could all sing so incredibly well, who were very handsome and very sexy, and suburban white girls would have posters of them in their room, and that was really, really weird for suburban white parents to the point where suddenly

synth music or not synth Swedish pop music comes over and the girls are putting up those posters instead and the parents are just like, oh, thank God. And so I want to just reach back and grab boys to men as well because they're early 90s. Yeah. And then I think that can take us through to beyond the manufactured beef. But so you've got Boyz to Men who are doing huge business crossing over,

which is kind of my point, I guess, is that you have hip hop crossing over over into and in a way through them specifically, but in a way that not even Will Smith was doing, crossing over into being pop music, and it brought forth a lot of R&B stuff with it too. And so are there other... So are there other, it feels like, and by that time, I guess MTV is very much legitimizing a hip-hop and rap by expanding their catalog to having full on, not just UMTV wraps now, now it's showing up in the top 40 type stuff and things like that. So we're seeing that happening through the early 90s as well. Is there a homogenization of it or does it stay pretty true to itself and pretty authentic in crossing

over into pop? Oh, no, it definitely loses a lot of authenticity. That's when you get the beginnings of folks, the keep it real era, which is a phrase you would hear a million times over from folks claiming to be the authentic into Keep It Real versus the folks who are going to pop around for selling out to sell more records. Yeah, as far as that crossover with like, you know, voice to men, but like R&B generally, like there was a whole lot of that in all authentic ways. I mean Mary J. Blie, she, you know, she's often times referred to it was like the queen

of hip hop in R&B, even though she's not like a rapper, SWV, such as the whole, whole host of groups at the time who were like, you know, in meshed with rap music for sure. Do you see to an extent? Yeah, exactly. and in mesh with rap music for sure. Do you see to an extent? Yeah, exactly. Oh, whole lot. So yeah, no, that's always been there. And actually, after Tupac died,

there was like almost like a rush by record labels to try to find the Tupac replacement, like who's gonna be that figure. And at first, one of the folks who kind of showed up who kind of like had the same imagery kind of of Tupac was Jarul. But of course Jarul sang a lot. And you know, all of his biggest hits,

a lot of singing, a lot of across over. And then eventually, when 50 Cent comes around, it goes back to this like 50 cents, the hard one, the gangster one, the one that's been shot nine times and the one that's from the streets and Jarul's over here singing. And he was always making fun of Jarul for singing, singing, singing, and that pretty much ended Jarul's career. So it kind of went back to that almost the 80s like run DMC type like not weed coming

out here, weed tough and all that jazzy stuff. Get out of here with it and then the 50 cent jar rule thing kind of brought that back and then after jar rules out of the out of the way 50 cent started singing a hell of a lot a lot of his biggest hits were him singing on the hook. It was just a hypocrisy was crazy but yeah. Okay. Okay, so that takes us through into the late 90s, what's happening there? Because at this point, you have the, we did a deep space nine episode.

Did you ever watch Star Trek Deep Space Nine? I believe I watched one or two episodes of it. Was that the one when they got lost like, hell of far away? No, it's Voyager. Yes, Voyager. Yeah. So Star Trek Deep Space Nine is,

it's set on a space station, at the intersection of like three different cultures. But because it's on a space station, the plot kind of has to come to them, which means that for the first time you have a Star Trek series that has an overarching plot, which is really a different thing because most of the time Star Trek was

bottle episodes like this week they're going there and you could deal with archetypes, but you didn't have character development. Deepest in the night had character development and it's this interesting little secret that like one of the most positive representations of black fatherhood was on deep space nine Avery Brooks and Sirok Loughlin or Lofton What played a father and son Who the father was in charge of the space station and you know how much he loved and he was he's a grieving widower and then he dives into his job and

Then he falls back in love. And the whole time he's got his son with him and it's just this incredible relationship that they depict on screen. I mean, it's very, very, I just, I really love it just as dad, like I love it, but also it has the overlay of like everybody at that time was, you know, very critical of like, you know,

there's no positive dads on TV for black America And I'm like, yo, it's right there But they have this episode, but it's science fiction. It doesn't count right right But they have this episode Called the Gabriel Bell riots. I forget the actual thing. We did we did a watch along with it and basically they go back to 2024 and in 2024 they go to San Francisco and they find, they accidentally go back to 2024.

And they're right in the middle of like the biggest riots that have ever happened. And it actually is the thing that kicks off the utopia that Star Trek becomes. And they're called the Gabriel Bell riots because they're named after a guy who gets killed by the police in these riots where, and it's very ham-fested on some levels, but they're basically like they're asking, how could it have ever gotten to this? I can't, you know, I read about this in the text books, but how?

And they said, well, you know, you've got these these political leaders that don't care. You've got an overworked social network or a safety network that doesn't work and all this kinds of stuff. Anyway, it's written by, I then it starts really just kick and ask. But that particular episode happens as a result of the writers driving through Santa Monica and seeing just enormous homelessness in 1993, 1994. And yet at the same time, you're seeing NAFTA starting to kick in. You're seeing the promise of Clintonian economics, really taking off.

And the economy is doing a lot better. And yet there's so many people that are getting left behind and kicked, kicked out. And so, I mean, we mean, we're seeing this happen. So by 97, 98, the economy is rolling as hard as it's ever rolled. It's going really, really well if you're already in a position to benefit. What's happening musically by that point, what's happening that's new, what are people responding to, and what's generating? Yeah, really regionally, like this is late 90s is when the South really, really. And honestly, one could argue, took the lead

and they still have it now in terms of hip-hop creators and what's hot so much of it comes out of this out. So, you know, late 90s, of course outcast by then already, multi-platinum group, but then you had folks coming out of New Orleans and Juvenile, who nobody outside of this out had heard of before, releases a song called Ha, AJ. And he's recording live in the Magnorly projects, man. And you're seeing that the conditions down south that, like, for so long, we were always hearing about like LA and Brooklyn and you know, these stuff areas, but you're seeing like what it looks like freaking New Orleans and just

What folks are doing to survive down there, but yeah, this the southern sound really takes over and Continues to to really take the lead, but then also you get I mean you get M&M Who I think to this day is still the top selling rap artist ever. And yeah, you just get so much really big, like million dollar releases. I'm sorry, million, people selling million records left and right. Because yeah, that's the total request live era and so many rap songs, so many rap videos coming out up at the top and and yeah really just making huge amounts

of money but to get that critical consciousness, to get that voice about like this the inequities in our system and the challenge of finding peace and healing and freedom dreaming you you gotta go to quote unquote underground hip hop, which was not playing on the radio stations, which was not on MTV, and artists like Most Def, until equally, who form Blackstar, artists like Common, they had their own little niche. And for a while, allow those artists came together

and called themselves the Soul Quarriens, which is a name I always hated, but they sort of represented that like, okay, we're not, we're not wrapping about jewels because if we became the bling bling era, well that's ditty, right? Bling bling was, well, no, it was, he was Benjamin's, all about the Benjamin's baby.

Oh, right. Bling bling was a cash money records, BG and Little Wayne. But it's that, hey look, we're very rich, we have shiny suits. Yes, yeah, absolutely. So you had to go to quote unquote underground hip hop. It was underground in the sense that it wasn't on mainstream platforms, really at all, to get a sense of like, there being something else besides money and riches.

And especially to all the points you just said about the economic struggles of folks who weren't already doing well, like it was important to see that like, okay, so I don't have freaking stacks of hundred other bills to like make it rain in the club and that's when, you know all those old corny ass phrases that I hated came around. But yeah hip-hop was big enough, massive enough that you could find and still to this day. Whatever you really need from it, you could find it because now and at that time there was just

so many artists and especially as the technology started to change and you didn't need to be signed to a major record label to be able to go into a studio and make music. So you have sharing devices too. You had lime wire, you have a napster and everything that came after that. That would have helped a lot, right? Like now you help me a lot. You can be here and like you you could be like okay I can listen to music from Vallejo or I could listen to music from you know I don't know bum fuck Florida and oh which is that's an unincorporated area I'm sorry bum fuck rights which is the city but but you can like find a band and their whole catalog is right there for you.

So that's, yeah, like you said, that's the underground stuff. Yeah. No, absolutely. Is there a correlation between areas with, I'm going to say, because I'm thinking Atlanta, I'm thinking New York, I don't know enough about Houston. Houston doesn't seem to ping on my radar. But Atlanta, New York, maybe Nashville, these are places where you have a lot of money just constantly going through there.

Do you find that the hip hop there is more about the stacks of Benjamin's, the making it rain, the party type thing, Miami, I would put in that category maybe, compared to Houston, New Orleans, Detroit, those being more about raising a consciousness, or is that am I drawing patterns that don't actually exist? Raising a consciousness or is that am I drawing patterns that don't actually exist? That's a great question. I don't know that those patterns exist as far as like the drawing a consciousness part But maybe when I'm trying to think of who was really on some like you know We got pop of bottles in the club type music those were the cities the first cities you mentioned Atlanta my Emmy when I think of Detroit hip hop

or Chicago hip hop or Bay Area hip hop, it was much less of that way less of that. But it wasn't necessarily, you know, conscious of them that would be in there as well, but more struggle music like. Struggle music. Trying to make it. Yeah, like I'm thinking of M&M's voice

specifically being so fucking angry. But at the same time, touching a cord in people and the cleverness that, you know, his word play and stuff like that, but like, yeah, I wouldn't say that he's raising consciousness in any way. He's going back to the super spurn stuff and then just turning that up to 11 in a lot of ways. But he's letting, yeah, and he's letting folks know, maybe not as much through the singles, but which he has said himself, he hates performing because like, like his first light hit single, Who Am I?

He's like, yeah, he said he hates that song. I think it was 99 up in Smoke Tore with Dr. Dre and a bunch of West Coast folks. It was like, I hate this fucking song. And it just so stands out from the rest of the album because it's clearly an attempt to be a pop song and it worked really well. My name is, what I forget if I call it that. Yeah, I said who I meant.

My name is, hi, my name is Slim Shady. But the rest of his music was like clearly dealing with what at the time we weren't really calling trauma or mental challenges, mental health struggles, but that's what it was. It was like, grimy, traumatic upbringing, traumatic life around him, not knowing what to do about it, not knowing how to process it,

turning the drugs, turning the violence, turning to abuse between him and his mother of his child, and clearly struggling mentally. And that's before, I think a lot of folks who listen to the music would have the language for mental health challenges or dealing with depression, anxiety, and trauma, and trying to process one's trauma. But that's exactly what he was doing on most of those records. And that at tracks, I mean, Ed and I have done a number of things about this about the late 1990s. And that tracks with the late 90s of like, it's going good. What's your problem? And like,

it's not going good here. Like, well, unemployment is so low, not in my house, it's not, you know, and, and, and even if you're working, you're working in a, you know, low-end service sector job, and you're having to, having to bust your ass to pay the bills because, you know, yeah, everybody's employed, but look at the, look at the economic distribution graph. Right. And you know, wages have it increased since fucking Reagan. So. Right. But productivity has doubled. Yeah. Wait a minute. We'll be working four hour days then. Can we? Yeah. Like, what the hell? Yeah. So, okay. So the struggle, I guess, a struggle in the face of, oh, what an interesting pairing. You've got that struggle and then you've got the, you know, I popping, popping bottles,

as you said. So you've got those occurring at the same time, which again, makes a lot of sense for the late 90s. Then something happens in 2001. I forget exactly what I think Dana Carvey released a movie. Is that what it was? Starks at the beaches. There's a lot of sharks showing up.

That's right. That's true. 13 year old girl who got our arm bitten off, has now spoken out against transgender individuals. I might be thinking of another one armed gal from Australia to be perfectly honest. I don't know. Okay.

So why do you always go to the Dana Carvey movie when we all know what it is you're actually like it's specifically the fact that you go to the Dana Carvey movie that just drives me fucking crazy. Why? Why? Why that? Because, um, they were actually filming it at that time. Like when that happened, the announcement came through and they all had like a moment of silence and then it was like All right back to work here. We go like it's just such a weird like why did you have a moment of silence then like this is just the weirdest shit to me like it just It it absolutely captured my imagination. Okay. Yeah, I would love to find what was released on that day and start calling that the great national tragedy Just cuz do I but anyway, okay. So 9-11 happens. Actually, no, Bush steals an election. And, uh, yeah, let's. Yeah. Let's rewind a little bit. Yeah. Um, and the Republicans get their wish of getting the White House again. And you've got compassionate conservatism, which is just smiling as they cut your benefits.

And then 9-11 happens. Yeah. And then the unending war. What is that doing? That's three body blows in a row for a lot of families. And for many, it's actually, it's it's actually just the same like these economic policies continue to enrich people and they continue and pro-vish people. Like you don't really see that shift until his tax cuts come through for a couple of years. But what's happening turn of the century,

turn of the millennium? Yeah, honestly, it's a little bit disappointing that as far as the really big platform artists, early 2000s, like the biggest rap artists, where Jay-Z hands down, as the biggest, but Eminem up there. I mean, Eminem probably sales-wise bigger, but in terms of influence on the culture and the biggest, but Eminem up there. I mean Eminem probably sales-wise bigger, but in terms of influence on the culture and the industry, Jay-Z, but Jay-Z, Eminem, Fiddi-Sent, there wasn't

a lot of like Iraq would come up or George Bush would come up in like particular lines, but there wasn't a lot of movement music from the really big platform artists in terms of, you know, when you think about Vietnam, you think about how, you know, how the music was dealing with Vietnam is like, you could think of all these different tracks. It was like momentous, but for Iraq and George Bush, I can't say the same, not just, I don't think it's unique to hip-hop either. It's just like, that's true. Yeah. And in punk, that's true. Yeah.

And in punk, we saw the same thing. You saw, you saw a lot of fracturing around that time, based on what our guests taught us. You saw a lot of fracturing at that time. You saw a lot of diving inward and just kind of like, I guess we're gonna do the best we can around here. And like what you just said with Jay-Z, I mean, the rock aware, roco where?

It's all in Roca., it's almond Roka. So it's got to be Raka. Yeah. But God, I want him to buy an almond farm now. Just almond Raka would be. Anyway, Fat Guy dreams. But so what do you call it? Yeah, he turns to just finding new avenues,

new pots to catch money in, right? Like that seems to be most people just kind of... Aaron Berninward toward that then. And Jay-Z is one of, I mean, the blueprint, which is one of his highest most critically acclaimed albums, came out on September 11th, 2001. And they introduced the world to Kanye West in a lot of ways. And yeah, I mean, yeah, again, you'd have to go to like, quote unquote, underground rap to get anyone really, really going hard at George Bush or the Warren Iraq,

artists like Immortal Technique, who was very revolutionary in terms of like politically revolutionary and his content of his music, most deaf, others, but yeah, not the not the big platform stuff and I don't know if that was the big major labels weren't trying to touch it or the hip-hop artists didn't care or weren't trying to touch it or if everyone was just so damn disillusioned. I mean, you have to come in out of the 80s and 90s, so like, well, damn, I mean, it's just wave after wave of strife. So, yeah, hard to say. Yeah, I mean, I remember the Dixie chicks lost any and all

the chance at making money. And, you know, if they're willing to do that to three blonde white women, yeah, it sends a hell of a message. Yeah, I'm eventually, I think it was during the 2004 election, Eminem had a song, Mosh, that was supposed to be like a, yeah, you know, and it was perfectly fine song. And I think it performed it during Saturday night live. So it was a big day, like he tried,

he tried to make it a thing, but it kind of just came and went, and plenty of other songs to play, and other artists, but just all just like here and there not really can't really point to You can't really point to yeah exactly exactly. Yeah, I remember mosh because it was it was unique at that time because you had black eyepiece and Yeah sound garden or They they they they collaborated with, oh God, it wasn't Sound Garden. It was that mega band that came together out of some of some people from sound garden and some people from um rage against the machine and they made their own band

And they did a thing with black eyed peas and they did anxiety Oh, right. I'm in that. Yeah, and I remember anxiety compared to mosh and it was such an interesting representation of the spectrum of responses. Anxiety was all about literally my anxiety and it's coming down on me. And it's just, it's literally like naming the thing that's bothering me. And then on the other side, you had Mosh, which was calling for collective action. And we hadn't seen that many calls for collective action in a very popular song since I got I kind of want to say Mr. Wendell and even that wasn't collective action that was calling out the problem of homelessness. So yeah, well muted Ed. Audio slave. Thank you. Thank you. But first I thought velvet revolver was like, no, I know

it's not. No, that's not it. So yeah, I mean, you had those two come out really close to each other and then what really broke through was when Gwen Stefani decided to start going into going into distracts because Hall of Back Girl was that and heia were like also paired and I'm just like this is a really weird time to be alive musically. Yeah I love how you say musically. Yeah yeah yeah everything else is perfectly normal. Yeah so all right what's interesting's interesting, just to go back to the martial art quick, it was interesting that it seems like that would have been the perfect call to action because it was a white artist. And the top of his career, Saturday Night Live, huge platform, and it was the election.

And after everything that Bush did or failed to do during his first term, it just seemed like this has to be kicked out, like this is all, but none of that could talk. The Swift boat campaign, like, no man. So it just failed to really materialize into anything. Yeah. That really stuck. It was just like, wow, man, if Eminem can't convince y'all, then I don't know what to

tell you, man, because another four years after that. At that same time, Switch by Will Smith had come out too, which is a club, a club bump in a long song, you know. Yeah. Clubbing was very big. That was the big clubbing era. I mean, clubs are obviously big now, but in terms of musically, like, I mean, we be clubbing ice cube in the club, 50 cent.

Like it was all about being in the club, party and spending money and not being worried about all of the very, very, very major things happening in the world in the 2000s. Yeah. No, that's now that I'm thinking about it. Like it's getting hot in here. Yeah And then the one where he tells you the layout of the room because like the carpet goes from the window to the walls Yeah, so you know, I know when yeah, sweat dripping exactly, right? Yeah, and it's a shame because your chandeliers you're gonna have to repolish them

Yeah, that's it's a damn shame, but yeah, like you're right. It's it's that's got to be like the the apex for the Atlanta scene then Oh, yeah in the Miami scene So yeah, cuz that sound was the sound so then other artists from other regions picked it up So, you know a 40-40 got together with Little John. And yeah, that everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he absolutely was. And then that kind of transition, not transition, but then auto tune came in with T-Pain.

And then it was all partying, auto tune in, and all as far as the big selling mainstream stuff that you would hear on the radio, because still a lot of folks listen to the radio, because streaming wasn't what it is now, and C on TV, because still a lot of folks got there media from TV, because social media and YouTube weren't what they are now. We don't have streaming yet, in a major way. It was all streaming of like indie stuff. So yeah. Yeah.

And I, so you and I, both, I mean, all three of us actually have hailed from roughly this area. Do you remember there was a radio station 100.5 and it advertised itself as, it was a top 40 station and it advertised itself as, it was a top 40 station and it advertised itself as today's hit pop music, but without the rap. Oh, I don't remember that. And then you hear this gal on there going, ew, I hate rap. Like that was their tag. And I was like, well, that's, that's.

And a shitty ain't it. Yeah. Yeah. And what that immediately makes me wonder about is, you know, since then, pop has become semi-country-fied. And I can rant for days about country music having become indistinguishable from mainstream pop. Right. And I wonder, well, I don't wonder. I notice, you know, I think it's, it's an unfortunate reflection of the attitudes of, I think, mostly the people who are listening to country. of I think mostly the people who were listening to country.

I don't disagree. I mean, when you mentioned that, I think back to the early 90s, and I go back to the gangster rap, I go back to, but then I also go back to the consciousness raising stuff and what have you. And you remember cross-color t-shirts, man, while I'm sure you remember those. And do you remember the country music star who also was big on cross-country t-shirts or cross-color shirts except that they were just black and white? And as Garth Brooks, he also was using cross-colors. Oh, yeah. And it's just, I mean, there was very much a clear like, hey, white people remember this

music. And it's like, yeah, but now it's not singing about any of the cool shit that you used to sing about, you know, like minors on strike or, you know, stuff that matters. Like it's all, you know, and then with bush hitting the ground running. And with 9-11, then you had just jingoism all day every day. So, Toby case, I'm looking at you asshole. Um, so okay, so it's it's everybody's clubbing the mid 2000s. Um, there's a lot of stuff happening throughout the world that we're all just absolutely ignoring. And M&M cannot even get people to call to a collective action.

The Arlo Guthrie of his time, really. And you go Mosh or you go to Alice's restaurant. But so then that's 2006 2007 Like you said it a lot of clubbing music and then 2008 hits and Everything's better everything changes completely You know, we we fixed it hooray go us We became post racial exactly you're welcome America and So what happened And at that point aren't you the one who said you're

not a liberal earlier? Like, like, yes, late minutes. So, um, Kanye is huge at this point, right? Like, yeah, and Beyonce are, uh, they're, they're both just chugging along and now it's is there any I guess there's still regional differences but don't they kind of take over everything yeah for even Timberlake even gets in on it for at least an album for a bit yeah yeah yeah pretty much and pretty much from then on like the regional differences start to fade away Oh quite a bit and I'm sure I'm sure that's largely due to technology like you know in the 90s We had to have physical CDs right if you didn't live in the barrier

You weren't gonna freaking get a e40 CD most likely if you lived and you know if you lived in Nashville Maybe but like when I know anyone who was really listening to that so technology now it's like you know, if you live in Nashville, maybe, but like when anyone who was really listening to that, so technology now, it's like, you know, nothing really stays that local for that long, not if it's good or not if it's appealing to people, it's going to spread pretty fast. Um, so yeah, distinction too. Not if it's more for the people. Yeah, I had to throw that in there because it does definitely doesn't have to be good, but I'm in a field and then of course comes Drake and tell me about Drake.

He's Canadian, right? Yeah, he's from Toronto, you know, child actor, Canadian show, the grassy, which was really, really big when you and I started teaching. I remember kids always talking about it, but I was really. Yeah, oh yeah, kids were always talking about it. And I thought they were talking about Emer, but I was really. Yeah, oh yeah, kids were always talking about, and I thought they were talking about Emerald Agassi. I thought the chat, I was like, well, they are really into this,

and it took me so long before I realized they were saying Degrozi, and that was a Canadian show that I had never heard of or watched, but Drake was in that show. Because growing up, there was Degrozi. Like, this is the second or third iteration of it. I have never heard of it I've still have never seen it. Yeah, Mad magazine made fun of it once

Oh, I yeah from like hell a days ago, and I didn't watch it then either but but okay So so do this yeah credit. Yeah, so when he hits the scene That I mean obviously nothing to say about his success. It's just like through the roof. I mean, he had the scene in 2008, but his first mixtape that really, really did numbers. And here we are, you know, power many years later. But to his credit, he really contributed

to the art in the sense of showing emotion, talking about feelings, talking about being sad, and even though there's a whole lot of braggadocio and womenizing all that stuff mixed in, there could be no Drake in the 90s, not in the mainstream way, there could be no Drake. You had the toxic masculinity, which is still in Drake's music,

like it's in there. But of the 90s, that style of that, there was no way, like even the underground stuff was, it was underground for a reason, because it wasn't mainstream, because it wasn't tough enough. But even then, it wasn't what Drake's doing, like planned voicemails of girls that he dated and is missing and feeling sad about. Like there was none of that. So I definitely think he deserves credit for showing young people that like our emotions, our full spectrum, full range and it's okay to admit when you're sad or admit that you've been hurt

and things like that. I think probably more of his recent music is less of that, but that was who he was when he broke onto the scene, and that was his big contribution to rap. Aside from being a really good lyricist, but those first several albums of his really, I can't think of any other rapper that was as explicitly, quote unquote, emotional as him. So, um, we're women in the 90s and late 80s occupying any of that space. Like because it's what you're because you talked about the toxic masculinity and the toughness that would have prevented that. It feels like that would have also carved out a little bit of an

air pocket for women to speak to those things because that's considered at that time a feminized kind of kind of thing. Right. Were they doing that or were they going as hard as they could to try to get that male audience? Yeah. And as far as all the mainstream artists, it was definitely either also being tough or being hypersexual. So Lil Kim, Fox Brown, so it was one or the other. sexual. So Lil Kim, Fox Brown, so it was one or the other. Yeah. Yeah. So Drake very much is innovating then by yeah. Big time. Yeah. Big time. And again, like you said, Drake, there's also, I mean, Kanye is, I mean, he's iconic in

his music and the production value of what he's doing. And that's he was great. That's time he was reckoning. But yeah, you can't deny the impact of it and the success of it. Yeah. And he was really a 360 type, like in terms of the fashion part, the art part, the performance part, the... The actual lyricism. Bringing all these different artists together.

And yeah, you could definitely, I mean, he never, to my knowledge, like would really reference like the elements of hip hop or bringing it together, but you could definitely say, like if such a thing existed as a modern representation of the foundational elements of hip hop operating together. His like graduation era, late registration era Kanye is definitely that. Like the art was making an impact, the fashion was making an impact. Right. The musicality, all of that. The cleverness of the lyrics. Yeah.

Yeah. And just the party, the bringing, like so many folks, like he had so many people on his songs with him, at the time, you know, Rihanna, T-Bane, Jamie Foxx, like it was really a, you know, felt like, like, coming together of the community, which is how hip-hop started in those parties back then. So what happened to him?

Man, I wish I knew. I wish I knew and I don't want to put any like bad vibes out there or anything, or disrespect anybody. But when I think about Tupac and how brief his stay was, I never had a chance to let the fame really like go to his head and destroy him except just destroying him in terms of him Behaving in ways that were dangerous. I just wonder about I think like what if two-bought didn't die What if he lived a long life because I think about Kanye and I'm just like Man if we could just his career wise just like stop it after after like, you know, I don't know, maybe even my

beautiful dark Twisted Fantasy just like put a plug right there. Boom, we're good. And yeah, for Tupac, I kind of wonder because he was so hot headed and he was so just act first, think about it later, that I kind of wonder like if he would have adjusted with of wonder like if he would have adjusted with the times or if he would have ended up being one of those, you know, super problematic folks because Kanye, he What happened overripened

Yeah, it's what is that that quote from the Batman movie. I was just thinking about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you either die young or live long enough to become the villain that died in a hero or live long enough to become the villain. Yeah. I feel like Tupac Biggie, they died at their peaks. Kanye has lived long enough to become the villain. Yeah. I'm saying that he shouldn't live. I'm just saying like that, that arc just, it got off the rails and there is no coming back. There is no coming back. I don't care what this is like, Oh, no, no, these, you know, Andre became a face before he left the WWF, you know, and it was the end of his career and he slapped Bobby Heenan at the end of WrestleMania six, you know, and he had been a heel since WrestleMania three, like, and it was, it was an important turn, but he did come back and we let him. Despite him choking Jake the snake Roberts and and the hacksaw gym dug in, you know.

Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Ed athletic opera. Um, but yeah, yeah, I just want to shit. I forgot what I was about to try to say. Oh, just that I think there are there are issues beyond The public being willing to forgive. I think there are there are factors Internal to to the the to what's going on with with Onyee like a I don't I don't't think it's across an event horizon that like. I just think that we as a society live in a post-fact world, so we would let something back. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, given the opportunity. Yeah. Okay, so and then Beyonce, who and Rihanna, and I mean, you've got these women who have really come to the fore as just moguls in and of mean, you've got these women who have really come to the fore as just moguls in and of themselves, right? Are they bringing something different? Are they just perfecting a thing that's already there? What's?

Are they considered hip hop or are they? Not really. Okay. There you go. Beyonce could definitely wrap her ass off though. She wraps here and there and she does phenomenal. And yeah, and it's not even like, oh, Jay-Z must have written that. No, it's like you could, that's her in her own. You can tell it's her. She could wrap her ass off, but she just doesn't wrap very often. Rihanna too.

Rihanna has wrapped once in a while and it's been really good. But yeah, they're not there. They're on a whole another plane. Okay. Yeah, whole no the plane, but the Jay-Z Beyoncé marriage is like a hip-hop marriage like that is they are the Titans of mainstream hip-hop pop whatever I mean Beyoncé is kind of beyond genre now with her latest release, especially, but um, we uh, they are. They're a hegemon. Yeah. So we had the cold war of the 90s and now they are the the hegemon. And Jay Z survived. Jay Z was there for the big e2 box stuff. Like two pop two pop was he he called out Jay Z like he was talking mess about Jay Z on one of his tracks like Jay Z he survived he's seen a lot of people come and

go a lot of people but he seems to have grown a lot as well granted he's a hyper capitalist but in terms of in terms of his music and what he says and his value that he brings and the humanizing lens that he has brought more recently to his music. He's definitely grown a lot and it's just a reminder that I wish everybody had the opportunity to grow old enough to learn enough to see sort of the not the errors of the ways but to come to learn and understand the harm that they were doing with a lot of their stuff in the past. But not everybody gets that opportunity. Now, he actually is, I would also credit some of his ability to continue to evolve

to his ability to pun, because as you know, the song 99 Problems, in that second verse, they say, well, we'll see how smart you are when the canine comes and he says, well, I have 99 problems, but a bitch ain't one. And that's clearly a reference to the dog. So, I, you know, that's off there. There you have it. Okay, so I mean, that brings us into the 20 teens and then 2016 happened and I mean, we're living in I guess this would all be the modern era, right? Like we've got, you know, the resurgence of fascism. We've got a pandemic. We saw what the surge of fascism and pandemic did in the 1920s to jazz.

It really lit a fire under it and really helped, I don't think it helped, but it really fostered a environment where you see a lot of growth and variation in jazz. Are we seeing that with hip hop or has it stayed kind of, everything's kind of, we've got people have dialed in on the formula for making the money and now they are making the money. Now, you're seeing a lot of it. It's, I mean, there's just so much hip hop now, like literally any country on the planet, Google them, Google rap, and you're going to find some local artists rapping. It's literally everywhere.

But even in the U.S. mainstream, big commercial success artists, there are some who are like very, very critically conscious and are very much leading the way in helping us understand the world around us today. So Kendrick Lamar for sure, J. Cole for sure, like those two, any album they release, Kendrick Lamar especially, but any album they release is going to be, you know, top of the charts and young people are going to talk about it. Folks my age are going to talk about it who listen to rap and, you know, Kendrick Lamar has been on the journey as well in his music

and his most recent album was all about generational trauma and all about unlearning some of the harmful ways that he was processing his own trauma. And it's basically an album all about the importance of therapy, especially for men, especially for young black men. And it's a commercial success,

Grammy nominated and all that. Nice. Even though it was a commercial success, Grammy nominated and all that. Nice. Even though it was like, oh, black men, we got to go get therapy. And I needed it. I was wrecking my life. And this is what it did for me. And this is what it helped me understand. He's got a song about homophobia, a transphobia specifically about, it's called anti-diaries. And it's controversial because there's some, it kind of depends on how you interpret his tone of voice because he kind of goes back and forth. His memories as a child grown up with his auntie. So like, you know, there's controversy over dead naming, for example, but it's like what, that he's speaking how

we spoke then. And then so he like, his pronouns go back and forth depending on what time period, but some folks are, you know, some folks think that's not right, no matter what. So, you know, and he drops F-bombs there, reflecting his thoughts at the time and what he was hearing people call his auntie, but then his folks are like, but you're saying it still, so it's still triggering to hear it.

So it's controversial. So I'm not saying it's like, you know, I'm not like co-signing the song, but for a rapper from Compton with street pedigree to be wrestling with this. Be wrestling with this and knowing young people are listening to it and helping them see how he's come to understand the connections

and overlap between transphobia and racism and how all of our different struggles are all in one and nobody's free until everybody's free. And still sell millions of freaking records and do global international tours and still be featured at the Louis Vuitton fashion thing and all that stuff is like that's hip-hop's come a very long way so him and and jay cove for much lesser level in terms of commercial global notoriety but jay cove he sells almost as many records and he is hitting people with the same type of content so there's there's there's a lot that. But then there's also a lot of the BS because BS

sells and at the end of the day, people want a party. So that party music is always going to be there. It was there at the beginning. It's going to be here throughout. Yeah. You know, meek Mill kind of hits that chord for me of talking about and again, not co-signing his stuff. But you know, like I'm thinking of the song, Wins and Losses. And just juxtaposing, this is shit that I went through here's what I'm trying to do. And at the same time, being very catchy and very much, and again, the journey he went through,

like finally getting released, I think what was it he was on, parole violation for stealing a bike or some shit? Yeah, some stupid. It was so bad. And I'll grant you that's more like 2016, 2017 stuff, but yeah, I'm kind of seeing that in a proto version in his song. I don't think he got all the way to where what you just described is, but that was just

a single song too. But yeah, and there's a ton, a ton of artists, um, Korde, who most people who don't listen to rap probably know as a Naomi Osaka's boyfriend and now, um, father of her, um, expect a child. Is his, is out of Atlanta? He's, you know, his, his albums all about, uh, you know, processing the trauma that he grew up through and he learned to do better or to build a better future for others. And there's just a lot of artists like that that most folks like our age would have never heard of like I really know him kids mentioned him. But like young people are listening to and I'm glad they have stuff like that in their ears that although far from perfect, it's it's basically asking them to consider to consider the humanity of others and consider the the bonds between all of us as we continue to fight for just freedom just being able to breathe so there's in there's so many artists out there who nowadays

you can't really consider it underground because back then it was underground because you really had to fight to like get it or get access to it because all of your content was coming from TV and radio and they weren't showing it and now everything's you know streaming and everything's just there for the folks for the people so it's not even underground it's just you know maybe maybe not as commercially big time as a Drake and you're not going to hear their songs as much during commercials or NBA games, but the kids know them. So yeah. So as we're winding down, there's there's some folks who just like they kind of pop up in my head when you mentioned this. So forgive me for just being. Oh, what about this person? Yeah. But Erica Badoo. do. Um, would you consider her hip hop or she more R&B? She was part of the soul quarry and who I mentioned earlier this episode, I think. She was part of that

like, you know, sort of Afrocentric underground type collective that was showing a dip, you know, juxtaposition between, you know, the gangster rap stuff and just be in holistic healing, loving humans. Um, but I mean, she herself, although she has rap to a couple times, she herself is an art be artist, but she has worked so closely with rap artists that is kind of like hard to separate. It's hard to separate her from rap for sure. Because I've noticed her trajectory, um, and some of her music is again, much more about that collective healing and things like that. But as you said, she works closely with artists. It's somebody mentioned in some podcasts

that I was listening to, I'm sure, that she's this really interesting person because she helps people find consciousness and then she gets a baby from them. I was gonna say, she has worked with a lot of rappers musically but also family building. But I think that's just kind of interesting because she owns she's only it. There's no shame in it. There's no anything. And again, when you talk about the very beginnings of this stuff is so misogynistic and so like women's bodies are commodity. And then here she is, you know, going on 50 years later and owning her sex and working with a lot of people and and like I'm not saying she's the only one responsible for it could well be that because they're stepping into these spaces she finds that attractive. I don't know.

But she does seem to have a positive influence on these artists and then also she gets to enlarge her family as a result. It's just it's kind of an interesting bookend to to what we were saying earlier. So. Okay. Well, where's it going to go? I mean, we've got 50 years of data here. You're an historian. What's going to repeat? What's what's what's going to happen that we've never seen before? You know, we'll hold you to this completely, you know, hold you responsible. Yeah. No, hold me to it. Hopefully in 50 years, I'll be around.

You're right. Yeah, you got me. You got you got you got a good chance of it. I don't, but you do. Remember, I was I was pulling up a linoleum. So true. 30 years at most. Well, the I guess long term, there's so many pieces of rap hip hop that appear out like the it's gotten beyond like even be able to really call it crossover like you see like even like

kpop groups like oh so many of those groups have like the rapper among them who like wraps and stuff that, you know, it's getting to a point where I think response and you'll get more of the like folks of like chronicle authentic rap and not and and and what have you which is fine. I mean hell there's no shortage now like Everyone throw your stuff out there and folks will find hopefully what they like best but one of the more immediate challenges is the young rappers the youngest ones and they're dying. Way too much. With my era, okay, big in 2-pop, that was a very big deal. And there's a few other big L, a few other rappers who died.

But now it's like every month, it seems like. Oh, from the Migos, just died a few. Yeah, he just got killed. Juice World, very popular rapper, overdose pop smoke, right before his first big, big national hit hit got killed. Little Pete, who I never listened to, but soon as did, he overdosed.

And I had a student class crying, like just shook that his favorite rapper had overdosed and died. and folks were seeing it live because he was streaming live when he passed out from whatever he was messing with. Nipsy Hussle killed. There's so many. And it's like almost hard to remember because there's so many. And some of them are smaller platform, but a lot of them are not.

X Tentacion, who I never platform, but a lot of them are not. X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, was still young, M.F. Dune, who was a legendary lyricist. He died young. Chugoy, Dave from De La Soul, he just died. He's only 56. So it's kind of like, they're really young ones are dying. They're either being killed or they're overdosing on drugs. And then the ones who are like, you know, in their 50s and 60s, just the, you know, health outcomes of black men, I suppose. And it's just like a reminder of the importance of, of, of health and access to, to, um, access, access to healthcare and just all of the things that that folks didn't have, um, from a lot of the backgrounds that these rappers grew up in. So, um, Lou Bay Fiasco, who's one of my favorite rappers, he's out of Chicago and he's been around for a long time. But he Lupe Fiasco, who's one of my favorite rappers, he's out of Chicago

and he's been around for a long time. But he has a song that, I went and came out this past summer and he has a song. And the first verse, the entirety of the verse is just rappers die too much. And then he just less to beat, beat Rye for a long time. And then eventually he starts singing and he's singing like, I wish I wish you were lying to me. Like, I wish you were lying to me about the amount of drugs you do. I wish you were lying to me. Like I wish you were lying to me about the amount of drugs you do. I wish you were lying to me about the violence that you're part of. I wish you were lying to me, because you're dying,

left and right, the young, the really young rappers are dying. And in the 90s, it was much more rare. It definitely no overdoses in the 90s. Like to be a rapper, anything beyond marijuana was like you would get dist for that. Like there's like Biggie's one of his most important crack commandments was never get high on your own supply. So rappers, it was like you would be looked down upon like to be found doing any kind of actual drugs. Like I remember somebody claims that, not M&M, somebody claims

damn I forget which rapper, but that particular rapper was like doing ecstasy and stuff. And it was just like a scandal like, what, like, what the, who is this loser? But now it's like normal for rappers to like be doing all these hardcore drugs on their Instagram lives. And, um, you've got them named after drugs. Like, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, um, so that's the immediate challenge. Like hip hop is going to obviously continue on, but it's just, um, it's very dangerous right and half for the young ones. Man, maybe I just sound old.

Maybe, you know, I'm sure folks in the 90s are like, look out dangerous. It is too bug and biggie. But that's two people. Like I could 10 from just the last year. So yeah. Uh, do you think too much? Do you think that, uh, going forward, um, we're going to see more queer hip-hop artists? I mean, I'm thinking of the success obviously from oh God the guy who worked with Nine H.D.A.L.S.

He was on the country billboards and then they took him off. Oh, little nonsensical. Yeah, yeah, they grew not justified taking him off, but they took him off anyway. And it's like, yeah, I wonder why. Right. Yes. So, I mean, I definitely hope so. There was, so there's the little nonsens, obviously, Frank Ocean, who's a singer, but works closely with hip-hop artists, Tyler the creator, who is a rapper, who you know, some people, you know, cues of like queer baiting because he said, he's like insinuated that he's, you

know, kissed guys and into that, but like not in such a way as to like firmly take a stand as being out and open. But in any case, even even insinuating that was like... It's still something, yeah. That was a career, career suicide back in the day. But there's another rapper Isaiah Rashad, who is signed to TDE, which is Top Dog Entertainment, which is the album. It was just the label that Kendrick Lamar has part of or has been part of until this was very recently. He actually was outed against his without his consent.

Somebody released a video of him and another man engaged in sexual acts and he kind of disappeared online for a little bit but he came back and his fan base rallied around him. So he's still from from what I could see, he hasn't lost any any popularity or credibility. So so hopefully that's a sign of folks being able to be their full true selves and engage in hip hop without having to to hide or to pretend to be something they're not, you know. Nice. So we're seeing the pull of authenticity getting widened in the future then. People getting to be, like you said,

they're full true selves. And also hoping, like I wish you lied to me. Yeah. Like pull it back a little bit from that because on some levels drug abuse is self-medication. So, okay, well, geez, I like the optimism of where you see this going. I really do. And that sounds nice. Yeah. Cool. Well, I don't know, I think we've hit, yeah, we got all the way into the future. So we've hit it all. Manuel, thank you so much for teaching us.

Of course. Yeah, I learned a lot. I really appreciate it. I don't know any music period, because I've never really listened to much music. And so it's always cool for me to learn about an entire genre. It's also just nice to be able to catch up with you.

Yeah. So is there anything, is there anywhere that people can find you if you want to be found? Yeah. So like I have taught hip-hop studies. I'm an ethics studies teacher and hip-hop studies is certainly under the umbrella of ethics studies, but I have a podcast about education. So I don't talk a lot of hip-hop on there, but I do talk about education a whole lot. And that is, it's called all of the above.

There's like a million shows called all of the above. So the easiest way to find me would be at the website, aotashope.com, and you'll see all the links there and contacting full and all that good stuff. Nice. I'm going to, I'm going to go around the horn. Ed, what do you recommend for people to read this week? What I'm actually going to recommend for people to read this week is kind of homework for people to read this week is kind of homework in preparation for what I'm going to be talking about next. Okay. I very, very highly recommend the Electric Church Science Fiction novel, and I'm trying to find the author's name, because I'm reading it.

I'm going to start reading it. Yeah, you think. Mostly. Yeah, you think mostly we found that most sci sci that Ed has covered for us starts with age. He's the leader is one of the two of us. I love you cartoons. Now you're wrong Jeff Summers. The author's name. Okay. Brother of Mark Summers, the guy from double there. Oh, okay. Yeah, making that up. Yeah, okay. Um, the electric church by Jeff Summers is a very recent entry in the cyberpunk genre. Okay. Which is what I'm gonna be talking about. And it's, yeah, it's an excellent example of a whole lot of the parts that I'm going to get into about what makes cyberpunk cyberpunk.

And yeah, and it's a propulsive read. So that's my recommendation. What about you? I'm going to recommend that you download the single Fly Away from 2019 by Blacklight, BLAQ, L-I-G-H-T. It gets it some of the stuff that we're talking about. It's also a friend of mine and Manuel's musical effort. It's a good bit of music. So I'm gonna just recommend that to folks. Manuel, what do you recommend for us? Well, since you were asking me about the future, and we had a sci-fi recommendation, since I do work at the alma mater of the Great Science, Fixing, Writer, Octavia Butler,

I would recommend Parable of the Sower, and say, I hope our future is brighter than that. Parable of the Sower. Yes. Nice. Let's all hope. of the solar. Yes. Nice. Let's all hope. Yes, definitely. Yeah. Well, again, AOT A show.com.

So download that after you finish giving us a five star review and then go listen to Manuel's stuff. He does incredible work talking about education. I've listened for a long time and not just to the episodes that he's had me on. But it's good stuff for the longest time you had a YouTube channel for that too. Yeah, when we have guests on we throw it on the YouTube also. That's pretty cool. So yeah, aotashow.com and again, Dr. Manuel Rustin, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. And for a geek history of time, I'm Deemian Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock and until next time, keep rolling 20s.

lock and until next time, keep rolling 20s.