Good Life Project - [BONUS] Humble the Poet | Music Month

Episode Date: May 16, 2019

Continuing with our special Music in May Thursday episodes, my guest today is Toronto-raised former elementary-school teacher turned MC, spoken-word artist, poet, and international bestselling author, Humble the Poet (http://humblethepoet.com/). In today's conversation, we explore not only Humble the Poet's journey from teaching to music, rap, video and spoken word, but also how his experience as the child of immigrants, being raised in the Sikh tradition and, in his words, not seeing anyone else in the music world who looked like him, shaped his lens on possibility, his stories and voice and values.In addition to his music, Humble also has a great new book out that distills 101 short and sweet insights for better living called UNLEARN (https://amzn.to/2Ytpb0B). And as with all of our Music in May episodes, Humble shares a musical offering at the end, this time in the form of a spoken word piece, so you want to be sure stick around for the whole conversation.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, we are continuing with our special Music in May Thursday episodes. Super excited. My guest is Toronto-raised former elementary school teacher turned rapper, spoken word artist, poet, international best-selling author, Humble the Poet. Though his former students used to just know him as Mr. Singh, he's performed at concerts and festivals around the world, including little places like Lollapalooza. And now it kind of pretty much splits his time between Toronto and Los Angeles. So in today's conversation, which I would probably describe as fiercely honest, wide ranging, we take a deep dive into

not only his journey from teaching to music and rapping, video, spoken word, but also how his experience as the child of immigrants being raised in the Sikh tradition and in his words, kind of not seeing anyone else in the music world who looked like him, how that all really shaped his lens on possibility, on his stories and his voice and his values. And we dive into a series of moments and really honest awakenings, often painful reckonings that woke him up to how he wanted to live his life and devote himself to his craft and his vocation. In addition to his music, Humble also has a great new book out that distills 101 short and sweet insights for better living called Unlearn that you definitely want to check out.

And as with all of our music in May episodes, Humble shares a bit of a musical offering at the end, this time in the form of a spoken word piece, which you don't want to miss. So be sure to stick around for the whole conversation. So excited to share this with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot.

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The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. I mean, I'm curious when the threads of what you're doing now, what's your earliest recollection of when it started to reveal itself? I was in the third grade, and I wrote a book called Revenge of the Teacher.

And it was a fictional book about my third grade teacher picking each and every one of the students off in a fit of revenge and actually killing them and having a very creative way to kill each of them and it was heavily influenced by uh uh freddy krueger yeah you know he gets in every the movies he gets in everybody's dreams and then he uniquely kills everybody so it was kind of inspired by that it didn't raise any flags i didn't have to see any special doctors or therapists because of it. Nobody back then in the 80s, nobody was really worried about it. And I read it and the kids loved it because they were all included in the book. You know, every student in my class was a character in my story. Right. And I think it was the first time I shared something

and, you know, for a straight week, they'd request that I'd read it. And obviously just knowing that, you know, an idea that I had was being celebrated. And I'm sure it touched upon people's just hearing their name being read out loud and it being surreal. You're eight years old. From that perspective, I think that was the first time I started having unique ideas. And the idea of creativity before creativity was even something I knew about. Writing as many stories as possible, concocting things, but at the same time, like really focusing a lot on math, you know, was really good with numbers. So I always thought I'd be doing something in that world

and, you know, creativity, I didn't see anybody that looked like me. So that really, at that point, it wasn't disheartening. It's just, you just didn't assume, you know, you see tall people playing basketball, you see, you know, you see people in the Disney channel, what they look like, and they don't look like you or talk like you, or you watch Full House. You don't see families that look like yours. So you don't assume that this is what you do. And, you know, probably in middle school, I started listening to more music, you know, wanting to make my own music and coming up with my own songs and different things and everything was there and everything just existed in my head and you know when I even when I first started releasing music

and I was past the age of 25 at this point I did it quietly on YouTube didn't show my face you know made lyric videos and it wasn't until people started recognizing my voice and being like, hey, I've heard that voice before. Oh, that's that guy. I met him once at that party and then coming up to me and being like, hey, you're that guy doing this stuff. Because I did put my name. Some of the work I talk about important things that were happening in the South Asian community, in Toronto specifically, in Vancouver, and just the areas that I knew and things that were on my chest. And with the idea that, you know, at this point I was working as a school teacher,

you know, at this point I understood that if a kid doesn't get it, it's because we're not explaining it to them properly. And understanding that whenever a child doesn't understand a concept that we're teaching them, we have to reevaluate our method of teaching it, not think about what's wrong with the child because there's so many different learning styles. And I realized that when people were expressing the frustration with the youth and issues that we were having, and I decided to put that in art and try to connect with them on that level,

it ended up connecting and taking the life of its own. And even then, I just took it as fun. Then I started going to spoken word events, you know, as I've told many people, get into the arts to impress the women. And it was a fun thing to do after work. So I think, you know, finding all of these, creating stories, I remember being in university and just kind of, you know, writing a fictional novel in my head and saying, you know, one day I'll get to it, I'll make this happen. And I started to realize that, you know, this wasn't a choice of mine.

Everything, it was such a natural inkling. Everything that I did in the opposite direction, in one way or another, somebody threw a monkey wrench in it just to try to get me back on this path. So, you know, for me, it's really a big question of obsession versus passion. I feel like this is putting words together, bringing ideas to life, having a spark in my brain, and then seeing it manifest into something tangible. Like the excitement that that brings me has been a common thread in my entire life. And now I'm in a position to do it full time and I'm so blessed. Yeah. So, I mean, it really touched down very early in terms of like

the expressive, the creative side. You used a phrase, I didn't see people like me doing this type of stuff out there. So sitting across from you and also knowing your background, like, I think I know what you're talking about, but for those listeners who are not familiar with who you are, what your background is and not staring and looking at you right now, what do you mean by that? Yeah. So I have a very handsome beard and I have a very big turban and I'm Punjabi, which is North India, part of North india the state bunch mean five odd means rivers so punjabis are people from the five rivers and a big chunk of punjab now

exists in pakistan so it's a you know it's it's a loose it's a loose reference to call us indian but my parents are from the india side and they immigrated to Canada in the early 1970s. And my father became a cab driver, even though he had a master's degree. And my mother had some college, but she ended up working in and out of different factories. So with my background, not seeing any type of representation in any type of media, unless you saw a comedy movie that was making fun of a brown any type of media unless you, you know, saw a comedy movie that was making fun of a brown guy for being a cab driver or, you know, the Simpsons having a pool at the Quickie Mart or, you know, anybody else in a convenience store or gas station. That's

the only time I saw a representation. And as a kid, my dad was a cab driver, so it made sense. You know, I wasn't offended. I just, just, these were my contexts. Like, people don't look like me. And I mean, even up to this day,. Like people don't look like me. And I mean, even up to this day, you know, I'm, I'm probably still one of the most prominent guys with a beard and turban, um, that people will see in mass media. Yeah. I mean, I'm curious also when you're, were you born when your parents came here? No, I was born and raised in Toronto. Got it. When they came here, did they kind of come and say, okay, I want to carry all the traditions with me? Or did they come and sort of like make the decision, let's see if we can assimilate?

Or was it something in the middle? Because I'm always fascinated by that. I'm always fascinated by that too, because I feel like those conversations happen, but they don't ever actually happen with the immigrants. And I've written about the immigrant experience and my experiences with it. And then I had, you know, when somebody brings that up to my father, you know, for him, I feel like it was a lot more pragmatic. It was like, all right, we're going to come here and we're going to make money and we're going to earn and we're going to build a better life. And I don't think he in any way, shape or form thought about the cultural impact. I don't think it even occurred to him that you're going to a different country I think whatever was pragmatic at the time he did

so he's like I have to learn English all right let's learn English I don't think having a social life was a priority of his even now you know they're both retired and live very very simple lives so I think from that perspective you know his social life was going to be his brothers and his sisters and, you know, anybody else from the village or anybody else from Punjab or India that he came across while he was in Toronto. Like his oldest friends are just people that also came out in the 70s and, you know, and they all lived together and, you know, 15 people in an apartment until they earned enough money to get their own places and slowly build their own lives. So a lot of my dad's oldest friends from back then are just whoever was there within the community. So I don't think they felt, they probably didn't feel the pressure as much.

Whereas his brothers, his younger brothers, he brought them and they came as teenagers. They actually both did cut their hair and assimilate. And I feel like that was because they were in school. So maybe the pressure, my father came, I think in his early twenties. Right, so he was kind of past that moment. Yeah, I think so. I think he had finished university already back home.

So he had come immediately joined the workforce and probably the jobs he was getting, working in a factory, he was probably working in a lot of jobs that were just full of immigrants to begin with. Probably not feeling a need to kind of fit in and blend in. When I grew up, I actually didn't have my hair grown. My mom used to cut my hair.

I was a little bowl cut kid or a mushroom cut. And my father wore a turban. I didn't. And that always confused me. Like, why does he look like that and I look like this? And I think maybe they made an effort to try to get me to blend in. But at the same time, I also feel like their relationship with spirituality, with Sikh philosophy in general wasn't very strong. I think for them it was just cultural inheritance.

This is how we look. Oh, you know, and people in Punjab cut their hair all the time as well. It's just kind of a cultural preference. And if you get more into the spiritual side, then you take it a little bit more serious. And then it wasn't until my, you know, I was probably about six, seven years old. My mother was working at the Kellogg's factory

and she, we had moved, it was around the corner from the house that we had purchased. And this was my parents' first, you know, legit proper house where we all had our own bedrooms. And I think a year and a half into having the job she got a serious shoulder injury and i think that really made her have a downward spiral because she felt like she uprooted the entire family to this neighborhood

just so we can work in this factory which she could no longer work at and i think she found solace at a you know at one of the the temples and i think she got solace at one of the temples. And I think she got her education in Sikh heritage and spirituality here in Canada versus back home. I think back home was a little bit more passive, a little bit more like, here are the basic rules. Here are the big holidays. Here's what you got to do. And I think out here, when she had the free time and she was looking for something now, now that she wasn't earning. And I don't know how that impacted her relationship with my dad back then.

I think she found a lot of solace in the philosophy and in the beliefs. And then she brought that into the house. Because I know she got my father to quit drinking. She turned the whole family vegetarian. And then I think just as a little mama's boy, she's like, I want you to grow your hair. And I'm just like, let's do it. And then it wasn't as challenging as a little kid you know dealing with some of it but then i started to notice that hey i used to fit in and now i'm always standing out right you know kids are looking at me funny kids are making fun of me yeah and i started noticing that and this happened at eight and i

used to envy the kids that i knew since like i was five that always had their hair i'm like oh at least people are used to them they're not used to me they remember me a time different but I mean everybody has their own challenges it wasn't going to go away this is just my eight-year-old nine-year-old brain trying to process all of this yeah I mean and it's interesting too because you know like at that age like that age in your early teens it's like your friends are everything and and you know fitting in and being accepted is everything. And that you're going through this in a weird way. It's almost like you're caught in the middle between your mom adopting all these traditions and saying, this is important to me.

It's important to us as a family and we're all going to embrace them. And then you not really being a part of that up until that moment in your life and also having friends outside that you want to just be accepted by and be like, I'm like one of you. Completely. And it operated on different levels. Like it wasn't just, you know, this was Sikh heritage and spirituality, but there's also Punjabi culture, you know, and how people dress, spoke, acted, you know, partied, you know, what type of people they hung out with. And so that story of having one foot in two different worlds and, you know, what type of people they hung out with. And so that story of having one foot in two different worlds and, you know, either feeling like you're being torn apart or finding your

identity and becoming a bridge, you know, that's the story of every child of an immigrant, you know, them coming into a country that celebrates the individual, you know, versus many other countries that, you know, really focus on the unit, you know, really focus on the unit. You know, what's more important, your last name or your first name? You know, and coming to North America, it really became about the individual and, you know, figure out who you are and what do you do for fun? Whereas with back there, it's like you're living in a village, you're part of a unit and you play a role. And my parents never even knew the word why existed when it came to what their parents said to them. You know, it's more just transmission like this is the way it is.

Yeah. Like if my grandparents said jump, they just jumped. They didn't even ask how high they just jumped. And for us, they were like, do this. And we're like, why? We would always question it because we were North American kids. We grew up here. We were watching Saturday morning cartoons. We were part of this world now.

I don't think there was ever a direct acknowledgement of like, oh, there's a culture shock here. Once my mother became a homemaker after she couldn't work anymore, that just further isolated her from what the real world was going through. My father had a better idea because he was a cab driver. He got to the point where he doesn't even have an accent when he speaks English. You know, he sounds like me. And it's because he's out every day driving a cab,

speaking to people, being social. Where my mom, you know, when she speaks English, it sounds as if it was her first day in the country, even though she's been in Canada longer than she was in India

at this point. So it's a very interesting idea. But and I think every single child of an immigrant right now, no matter where they're from, is finding a way to reconcile it on their own. For me, I'm just a big proponent of, A, let's stop feeling sorry for ourselves if our parents don't understand us. Let's instead spend more time trying to understand them. You know, they wanted us all to be doctors, lawyers, and engineers because they came here with a very specific goal to improve their quality of life, their circumstances, create more opportunities for the family. That's why they came here. Nobody told them you could be an author or a rapper or,

you know, a poet or design clothes or, you know, become an influencer. Nobody ever told him any of those things before. And I think from that perspective, it's a very slow kind of back and forth dance between, you know, the generation that I'm a part of and their generation. I mean, it's interesting also because I caught the video that you did a little while back of you and your mom in the car where you're like playing. Yeah, playing my music, yeah. And asking her what she thinks about it.

And the look on her face is priceless. It's like there's the words that came out of her mouth and then there's just like the look on her face. She's kind of listening and really trying to be patient and understand. You're like, okay, this is the choice that my son has made. And like, how do I feel about it? And what should I say and what should i not say and um uh it was a really sweet sort of you know like short exchange actually we have a we have a great relationship and i know just from being a teacher and remembering what i

what it was to be a student you know cognitively you know i i got some good genes you know it was going to school wasn't difficult i was able to process information i was able to get things the first time and um you know that's a learning style and you know that's a genetic lottery in some senses and i i was never able to see that with my parents because there's always a little bit of a language barrier so if my mother spoke english to me it would sound broken and it would sound like she's not, she doesn't know what she's saying or it's not making as much sense. But I slowly realized like, no, like this is who I got. Whatever I have to contribute to this planet, I got from these two.

And this language barrier doesn't take away with how smart they are and how well they can actually follow along to things. So I noticed that recently that they're trying their best to wrap their head around somebody in the creative. We don't have any entrepreneurs in my family, let alone artists. And if anybody says, you know, where did you get the art side in yourself? I have no idea. I don't know.

Nobody in my mom or dad's side is an artist in any way. And I'm sure they have an abundance of creativity within them. So it's always very interesting to see that when I play music for my mom or do different things, because I learned how to rap from all the hymns she made me memorize. All the hymns in Punjabi, all the Sikhi hymns, they all rhyme. They're all written in poetry. So I would just, you know, and she'd bribe me to memorize stanzas. She'd be like, this, you know, this has, for every stanza you remember, I'll give you a dollar.

And the long ones would be about like 35 stanzas. And when you're like seven years old, 35 bucks is a lot. And then there's the harder ones that were in like Farsi and different languages because some of the gurus who wrote them were just these amazing poets. And some of these were like super small stanzas and they'd be like 200 long. And she's like, if you memorize them, you'll get 200 bucks. So I would sit there just memorizing hymns, not knowing what they're saying. I'm parroting them.

I don't even know what I'm saying. Yeah. But I'd memorize the hymns. And that really, for years, this was like force fed to me for a good 10 years. But that gave me rhythm. That gave me cadence. That gave me the ability. Like, this is how I'm starting to see the pieces come together.

This has always been there. Yeah, it's so interesting also that what you pulled out of that experience, you know, like, without necessarily relating to the specific translation of the language, because if, especially if you didn't really understand

a lot of exactly what you're saying, but just knowing that there is a, it's doing something to you, it's doing something for you, and that there is, there is this,

there's the intonation and the rhythm and the cadence and that that alone has an effect. It's pretty cool. Do you still remember any of those? Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about one yesterday as well.

And now I'm learning the meanings. So I see the value. So there's And my mom was such a stickler for pronunciation. Because her real goals was like, let me get him to do this in front of other people. And it'd be very impressive. Ah, no kidding. Right? And probably there's a little layer of, he has to pronounce it properly for God to love him.

You know, like, it was just all these beliefs that she had. And probably there's a little layer of he has to pronounce it properly for God to love him. It's just all these beliefs that she had. But in that stanza in Sikhi, we talk about just one. And I think the important part of understanding that it's poetry also means a lot of lines have to be filled in. Because it's written in poetry. It's not written bluntly in your face. So in that context, my mom always said it was about God. And for me, I started to realize it was about oneness, that we're all one.

We are the creation. We are the creator. You can think about it forever and nothing's going to come from it. Some people stay silent their entire lives, like certain monks, and they still can't achieve it. Some people starve themselves and they fast. They can't do it either. And the whole list is about all the things people are trying to do to reach the divine. And what it was, it was a social commentary on rituals.

You know, people think that you just have to bathe in these holy sites and you'll find the divinity. Some people think you just gotta sit quietly. Some people think you have to starve yourself. Some people think you have to serve the poor. And he goes, you know, but if their heart's not pure, none of this matters. And that was, you know, the punchline or the thesis of the idea.

And realizing that, hey, like, you know the british came you know about 150 years ago and they had a probably at this point i mean even 200 years ago and they had a massive impact on culture in india and i think they really packaged it up sick philosophy to become more of a dogmatic religion you know know, so where my mom makes references, when she refers to what she considers God, she says, Oporara.

Opor means up. So she's literally saying the man up there. Right? In Sikh philosophy, the idea of God is everywhere, like code in the matrix. Yeah. So that reference to her pointing up,

that came from the British. That's Christianity making its way in. And she doesn't realize that. Because that's a mixture of the cultures coming in. And I'm not saying it's forced assimilation. If a whole new culture starts spending 100 years in your country and building churches. It's going to have an influence. It's going to have an influence. Most of the people, when it comes to religion and spirituality, we're mainly part-time.

So it's just about attending the holidays. It's just about maybe wearing a symbol on a necklace. It's the basic, mainstream idea of it. And they start to bleed through. You come out here, people talk about their karma. They've taken a word from India and given it a new kind of idea. And they'll say Spanish words. It kind of mixes in.

So I see where my mom got those references from. I was fortunate that just in my travels, I met a lot of art collectors and historians that really kind of helped me put things in perspective. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I think Sikhism is such an interesting tradition also because it seems like, you know,

on the first hand, it's pretty new in the context of traditions. It was about 500, 600 years old. Yeah, first guru was born in 1469. Right? And then it was like it goes through a series of gurus. And then, but then at some point, it was sort of like, okay, so the lineage of this tradition being like having one human person being like the leader of all this goes away. And it's all about the teachings.

Yeah. You know, and then that goes out into the world and becomes the thing that becomes translated, which is really different than almost every other tradition. The analogy that I was taught as a kid was it was never about the candles. It was always about the flame. So your first guru was a candle. Yeah. And then he lit a second guru and they just continued to go. And actually the compilation, the Guru Granth Sahib, Guru means dark, Ru means light. You know, so we don't worship the gurus.

These aren't. They're teachers. They're teachers. Yeah. And I mean, as a child, I was raised to believe that these were magical men with magical powers and halos behind their head. But now looking at it more, these were thought leaders and students themselves. And the first guru, he pulled a lot of writing from other people that had come and gone way before him. And he brought them into the fold.

And the fifth guru at that point put all these compilations together, put the writings from the first five gurus all together and called it the Guru Granth Sahib. Sahib is a sound of respect. Granth means compilation. So it's a compilation of the gurus. And there's writings from Muslim scholars. There's writings from Muslim scholars. There's writings from Hindu scholars. Yeah, Jain. Other beliefs.

And there was a uniform idea, a uniform idea of seeking the truth, you know, being students of the truth, being self-aware. And then I think as the movement grew, it started to get politically involved. So the fifth guru ended up being murdered by the king of the time. And there's different, very variating stories as to why. But I think the consensus is the movement was... Powerful. Well, it was gaining steam. And Sikhi were also, we're martial. We fight.

We train. We carry weapons. We have a culture of daibat that be prepared we speak up against uh what we feel is wrong so the first guru went to jail for speaking against forced uh you know forced uh conversions you know it was a mogul army uh running a uh ruling over a hindu majority so they were trying to convert all the hindus to islam he spoke out against that, got sent to jail for it.

And I'm sure the king that put him in jail didn't realize that this is how you amplify a message. And so by the fifth guru, I feel like he ended up being executed. I think for refusing to marry into the king's family. I think that was their first initial goal. And then what ended up happening was the sixth guru started and built an army. And then what ended up happening was the Sikhs started

built an army. Because now there's a reason to actually, something to defend. Something to defend. And I think that's kind of where we got our, that was the first beginnings of our look as well. I don't think a lot of people right now superficially

think to be a Sikh, you have to don't cut your hair, have a beard, have a turban, wear certain articles. I think it was much more of a pragmatic thing back then. I think it was, OK, we're starting an army. Everybody who follows me, you're in the army. Each of you are going to have to figure out how to fight and we're going to train you guys. And now this is what we're all going to look like. This is our uniform. And then it gets a little bit Game of Thrones-ish with the politics when

it comes to the sixth and when it comes to the seventh and the eighth guru. But the ninth guru, you know, he was the son of the sixth. So there are some stories as to why the seventh and the eighth existed. And I think they existed a lot more because they don't have any writings out there in the world. And a lot of the belief is... So this was all an oral tradition up until that point, basically. No, the first to the fifth, they all wrote stuff down. Right. But then after... The seventh and the eighth, well, and that's where there's a debate. As a kid, I was just taught to memorize their names and not know anything. As an adult, I was like, oh, really, what it was is they were trying to get the sixth guru's son. They were trying to find him and kill him, the successor. So the seventh and eighth, who don't have much of a historical impact,

they were propped up almost, you know, and that'll probably get me in a lot of trouble for saying that. But from a historical perspective, it's super interesting because the ninth guru, his name was Guru Tegh Bahadur. Tegh Bahadur means wielder of the sword. He had been battle tested, I think, from the age of 11. So I think there was a big push to find him and take him out early before he becomes an adult and he inherits

this army. And also the 6th Guru was really good at politics. He helped negotiate the freeing of over 50 princes in the region. So he had a lot of political power as well. And by the time the ninth guru became an adult and took over being a guru, he was executed. They found him, arrested him, executed him. And then his son, the tenth guru, the tenth and final guru, he inherited the army.

He inherited everything, I think, at the age of nine. And I'm sure he had handlers and people around him. But he grew up to be a really great fighter. And he, he made, he, he, he got a lot of payback. He, you know, he, he found those Kings. His, all, all four of his sons were killed. Two were killed in battle. Two were executed. Two young sons. He had a six year old and an eight year old. And then he, he, he just grew the army, grew the movement, started creating, started taking land, started building palaces and everything else. He's the one where he kind of made everything official and he kind of gave us a ceremony to kind of what he referred to as the Khalsa. And the Khalsa, again, now has a lot of spiritual connotations to it as viewed as, you know, this is how you get baptized into Sikhi.

From what I've understood and learned now, Kalas is an Afghani word meaning people who don't pay taxes, people who are free. So, he said the Kalas are people who are free. We are liberated from spiritual shackles of these dogmatic religions that are trying to control everybody, but also the political shackles of these oppressive ruling kings. You know, we will fight instead of, you know, bending the knee in a sense. And then after him, I feel like we had a very good stronghold and we had a good reputation. And North Indians in general were bigger than most of the rest of India in terms of like, I'm almost six feet tall and I'm the youngest, I'm the smallest in my family. All my little baby cousins are like six, two, six-three, you know, giants.

And from the 10th Guru, he took his father's writings, the 9th Guru, added them into the Guru Granth Sahib and said, this is done. This is all that matters now. It's these teachings. And then go out, make copies, spread it. And so now the Guru Granth Sahib is considered the spiritual guide for people in Sikhi. And it's much more of a philosophy than even a spiritual idea at this point. Yeah, I mean, even like, you know, what started this whole thing, which is the hymn, the chant, how would you describe it that you shared? The hymn?

The hymn, which is really, okay, so like there are all these things you can do, there are these practices, there are these prescribed things, but fundamentally, you know, like what really matters is what's in your heart. It's like who you are and how you actually, how you treat yourself and how you treat other people. Exactly. There's a lot of observations, a lot of these hymns and, you know, they're conversations and they're observations as to what's happening

and you know sometimes there's one i don't i don't know the the punjabi of it it's almost mocking it's kind of like hey so you you believe that the earth is spinning between the horns of two bulls you know this was a religious belief from some sect out in india 500 years ago and he's like where's the bull standing is the bull standing on land is that land on a planet that is also being spun on the horns you know and he also talks about you know people who do puja you know people who put up pictures of deities and they move candles and they move they do all that stuff and he's like look in the sky the entire sky is puja the sun is the flame circling creation and it's an ode to the beauty of it.

Like, they really, they did a lot of that. They challenged, back then, women used to have to jump in a fire if their husband died. So it was, your husband dies, you got to commit suicide at his funeral. They spoke out against that. They spoke out against gender inequality. They spoke out against classism. Classism is massive out there in India. The whole caste system.

Exactly, yeah. So if you want to, you know, the rule was if you want to meet the guru, you had to eat food first. You had to come to his place and eat, and everyone had to eat on the floor. So if a beggar came because it was a free meal, they got to eat. And if a king came, he had to sit on the floor alongside. And that was a big thing. And again, you know, I wish they had a stronger impact. You know, six represent 2% India, you know, but I don't, you know, the issues that they were challenging still exist. But I'm very fortunate that my baseline, you know, are a lot of progressive ideas of, you know, everybody is equal. Nobody is more special than anybody else. Women are superior in many ways to men in their ability

to give birth and give life. They're not, you know, don't treat them inferior, which is something very prevalent on that side of the world. And it's cool now being able to see the popularity of just Eastern philosophy, whatever is the key hinduism buddhism come over to this side you know and i tease people and like everybody eats turmeric now when i was a kid y'all made fun of me for having turmeric stains on my clothes now everybody's putting it in places it doesn't even belong it's like the latest health thing it's the latest health thing everyone's doing yoga everybody's you know saying namaste or whatever and it's just like it's it's interesting because i grew up, you know,

being taught how to meditate. I grew up being taught to focus on the now, you know. I was taught that my ego, my anger, my attachment, my lust, and my greed were the things that were always going to keep me from being at peace. You know, that's why I call myself humble. Humble came from me learning that the ego

is the size of the elephant and liberation is the size of a mustard seed. It's very refreshing to see that once those ideas get expressed out here and depending on the messenger or what have you, it's really connecting with people. I think we want a different set of, I mean, we're asking different questions. We want a different set of answers. We want to guide our lives by something that's, I think, more practical.

It's interesting you know like there's clearly a strong Hindu influence in Sikhism also in a lot of the language I mean like Maya and illusion

and Jivan Mukti like you know liberated being rather than transformation it's all about liberation which I think is a fascinating distinction because that would have been

his audience when these gurus wrote they're speaking to Muslims and Hindus right so it's like it's got to relate in some way, shape, or form. Completely, yeah.

So you've got to tie into the conversation that's already in their head and then bring them to this shared perspective. Tell them what they know. Yeah. You tell them what they know, then tell them what they need to hear. Yeah. Yeah. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

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jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. So when you reach that point in your life where you're like, okay, I'm learning this stuff as part of my family because your mom decides it's valuable. So you start to adopt it, the whole family starts to adopt it. And it's fascinating because now you're learning the rhythm and the cadence and the intonation of the actual, of chanting and of the hymns. And then simultaneously, you're starting to understand a philosophy of life that's attached to this generation. Because the philosophy came much after. As a kid, it was just like, we don't cut our hair.

These are the ten gurus' names. This is when they were born. Like very just useless information. But I mean, when you're a kid, you need to know the basics. Yeah. So then you end up going to college. You end up teaching in elementary school, right? Yeah.

What was the decision to do that? At that point, you know, I'm in high school and I'm having no idea what I should do. Right. Not what I want to do. Just what I should do. Yeah. Because you got the creative thread that's been following you the whole time. I got the creative do. Right. Not what I want to do. It was just what I should do. Yeah. Because you got the creative thread that's been following you

the whole time. Yeah. It's always been there and it's manifesting itself when opportunities for creativity are there. Right. But there's nothing along,

like there was a guy in my high school that wanted to be a comedian. Like that's, I wouldn't even entertain the idea. I didn't even feel bad. I just didn't entertain it.

To me it just wasn't realistic. So what ended up happening was I was just trying to figure out what do people do to get employed. And I think I found some newspaper article that was like, oh, architects make this much. You know, IT majors make this much. And then I think someone was like, get in computer sciences. And I was like, okay. So I applied for computer sciences. And the math side in your brain, which you said came kind of easy.

Yeah. Definitely would click well. I had some good, yeah. My grades were great uh in in the mathematics i was like this should be good i applied to like four universities i think i got into maybe two you know maybe i wasn't as smart as i thought i was but one of the university which was local was like uh york york university which is like the the the, the fun, University of Toronto is the academic one. York's the fun one. So I went to York and, uh, I got in for IT. I didn't know what IT was at the time. Information technology. I had no idea what it was, but it sounded close enough to computer sciences.

So I was like, let's do it. So I did my first degree in information technology. But the one thing that I'm so fortunate I did was it was a four-year degree or a three-year degree. And every year you were given the freedom to take an elective. So, you know, take all these coursework and then take one fun course. What I ended up doing was I took all those fun courses in my first year. So I took no computer courses, nothing to do with my degree in the first year. So I took mass media and the socialization of children. I took the Bible in modern context. I took a few more media classes and a few more philosophy classes.

I took nothing related. And I mean, this is the first time I got exposed to just ideas that I've never heard before. Whether it was the idea that every photo, and this is before social media, like every photograph you take is a manufactured moment, you know, even with a film camera because people pose and that's not what was happening at that time. You stopped, you looked, you smiled,

you manufactured something. And I had never heard that idea. The idea that the Lion King was racist, you know, you had light-skinned good guys and dark-skinned bad guys. And nobody has accents except for the monkey. And all the characters voiced by black actors were all hyenas. And they all lived in the ghetto of Pride Rock. And being like, whoa, I never thought about any of this stuff. And that really opened up a side of my brain that made me think a lot more critically. And I think that was a game changer for me.

So probably by the third year of university when I was finished and the next step was supposed to be you finish this undergrad and now go get an MBA. Because then MBAs get you internships and you'll get employed. I said, I need to do something else. And it was my sister that said, you know, I'd grown up going to all these Sikhi-based youth camps. So I started going to them when I was eight. And these were like, sometimes I'd go for a month. And you'd go have fun, swim in a pool, go skiing in the winter, play basketball. And then they teach you the core principles of Sikhi.

And some were great. Some were unhealthy cults and everything in between. Some were just babysitting services. But I spent my entire life going through them. And then once I probably passed 15, 16, I stopped being an attendee and became a volunteer. So I accrued a solid five years of working with kids. And my sister was like, why don't you become a teacher? You're already very good with kids. And I never thought of it. And I had a friend who knew someone who was a full-time teacher. And I sat down with him and he's like, bro, this is the best job in the world.

You get to work with kids. No two days are the same. You know, we get plenty of time off. You want to work on something on the side. You got plenty of time to do it. You get the whole summer to do stuff. So I wasn't going in thinking that I was a passionate educator. I just kind of went in being like, oh, this sounds.

Something cool to do for the next move, at least. The next move, and it sounds more exciting than an MBA. You know, it sounds like something that, you know, girls might be like, oh, that's so cute. You're a teacher. And, you know, it also sounds like a decent amount of money. The real motivation. Like, yeah, trying to explain to somebody I'm a computer programmer

doesn't sound as fun as like, yeah, I work with kids that change their lives and inspire them and shit you know whatever it may be and yeah it was my mindset at this point was all just what what is the path of least resistance so what changes in there i mean because you get to a point where you're doing this for how long did you talk for about five years about five years yeah was it a slow evolution that like reconnected you with this, like the side of you that was writing and spoken word and music or what, did something actually happen? I think what it was a combination of, and I'm going to formulate this answer while I say it because you helped of being back in the classroom and it reawoken the kid in me. Because now, when I would read to the kids, I read the books that were read to me. You know, one of the books was Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Louis Sacker.

And my teacher read that to me when I was in third grade. The book is still just as funny. I actually just did a reading of it a month ago in Toronto to a bunch of kids. And they loved it. It's just a universally funny book that kids love. And I think that kind of reawoken my creativity. And also the fact that this is the first time I didn't have homework. Like, you know, once work was done, what do you do? You know? And what I did was I took a second job, started tutoring kids in math. I still had that very strong math side to me. And I did know

academically, I wasn't challenging myself by being a teacher. You know, Teachers College wasn't the most—Teachers College rewarded a lot of effort. You had to put a lot of effort and a lot of work to get stuff done, finish the projects, work with people, do presentations. But there wasn't a lot of, like, racking your brain trying to solve equations. And it was not academically challenging. And all the friends that I had studied with in high school at this point, they're all becoming doctors and lawyers and engineers and chasing PhDs and really doing it, doing things that I knew I was capable of, but I just didn't want to. And that, you know, that kind of took a toll on me. And I thought to myself, I was like, I'm not really living my potential here. And it's manifesting itself because my reputation was he's a nice guy, but he's pretty lazy. You know, don't, don't expect him to go above and beyond in the classroom. He does, he treats the kids well, the kids love him. He gets the work done, but he's not staying in late. He's not, he's not going to join any extracurricular activities that you don't force him to join. You know, he'll help anybody who asks him to help, but he's not staying in late. He's not going to join any extracurricular activities that you don't force him to join.

He'll help anybody who asks him to help, but he's not going out of his way. And then one day I went to a concert and I saw a spoken word poet just perform. His name is Ian Kamau and he's still active and he's super talented. And he just said a line. He said, you know, like a fine wine, our love gets better with time. And I just thought like the simplicity and the beauty and everything he said, you know, like a fine wine I love gets better with time. And I just thought like the simplicity and the beauty and everything he said, it stuck with me. And this is probably 15 years ago. And you still remember that line.

I still remember that line. And I was like, I can do this. I can do exactly like I've done this. I've written poems for my friends, for their girlfriends. I got challenged at university to write a poem on the spot for somebody once. And like, I can do this. Like even my worst work is more impressive than I think it is to other people.

You know, like this actually is my thing. And knowing that other things weren't my thing. So I didn't think I was special. I just thought this one element of me is special. And I started. I started writing a bunch of stuff. And then one day I went to an open mic. It was like a little contest in a coffee shop with like 10 people.

And I won. And then I started. This was a spoken word. Spoken word, yeah. And my spoken word at this point is not like when you think slam poetry, like, you know, like, my feelings, I have feelings. And my feelings are all in my belly. And I'm going to, gonna you know that type of style I was literally just

rapping without music I was just because I grew up on hip hop so I was just literally rapping and there was no music but I brought a lot of aggression to it because hip hop has aggression

so my spoken word pieces were just me rapping 50 bars because I just keep writing and I'd eventually memorize them and then I joined the Toronto Spoken Word

Collective. They had this, like, and they had like a monthly event. So I started going there. I started competing there and then I would, wouldn't make it past the first round. And I realized it was because I was talking about like, everything I talked about at that point was like social issues. I was talking about Israel and Palestine. I was talking about, you know, toxic waste in Somalia. I was talking about, you know, toxic waste in Somalia. I was talking about, you know, activism, activist issues that were happening in Toronto. You know, I was talking about Mumia Abu Jamal, you know, because that side got woken up to me. I was awoken to that in high school, learning about Mumia Abu Jamal, somebody handing me the autobiography of Malcolm X,

and all of this connecting with the side of my Sikhi, which was, you know, civil disobedience, you know. My parents, you know, in Punjab, you see the police, you clutch your purse and cross the street, you know, because they're most likely going to rob you. So we were really raised in it. And then you'd hear the NWA rapping, fuck the police, and be like, oh, shit, other people feel the same way. And then just connecting with this. And I remember when I first started doing all of this people said i had a identity crisis you know like this guy thinks he's black he's rapping i'm like my gurus were rhyming and killing 500 years ago

this is you know rap reminds me of what i grew up on you know, and all of it just, you know, all these little pieces started to slowly come there. So I think as a teacher, my creative juices were kind of awakened, but I was also given more space. Yeah. Because now. You get all that time. I had some time. Yeah.

And I had money, so I could actually afford to like, you know, drive downtown and pay the $5 ticket to get there. You know, these weren't things that high school me could, or even university me could ever do. And I eventually stopped going to the performances, and that's when I started actually, like, I found, you know, I would tell people, you know, I can rap, I can do this, and then somebody would say, hey, my boy's got a studio, let's go.

And then you go to the studio, and the studio was a mattress and a microphone, you know. And at the same time, so I think the first song I ever recorded was, like, a birthday gift for a girl I was dating, you know. And I was probably, like, rapping like this, super quiet, because there was a room full of guys. And everybody was, like, smoking weed and just waiting for me to finish. And I was just, like, super Um, but it was a start and you know, I got some validation from them. So I kept doing it and found somebody else with another mattress and another basement, kept working on that and then kind of found my community. And at the same time, this is all fun. You know, I'm working, this is my, this is what I'm doing after work. Yeah. This is my pottery class.

This is my everything. The work is the reward. Yeah. And not trying to put it out because thinking to myself, like, oh, if you put this out, people are going to make fun of you. You put, you know, some of the stuff they say is aggressive. You know, guys in our culture are very alpha. So, like, you're just inviting yourself to get challenged, you know, at that next party you go to. There's a lot of different things that can happen just do it for fun and keep it quiet but then when

i started putting stuff out people started recognizing my voice as i said earlier and um it became where i had humble the poet and i was mr singh i had two separate lives and then my students started finding out they're like mr singh i saw that video of you on on the internet and you were swearing you know and hey mr singh we saw you do an interview on TV, you know, because the local Indian shows, you know, I was fast. I was just as exotic to them as I am to people out here. And the name started growing and I started getting small gigs, you know, like, hey, come out to Fresno, California. We'll pay for your ticket. And me calling in sick to go to Fresno, California. So it was a very organic thing.

And I still, and every artist I met at this point, I was not impressed with their life. You know, I was like, oh, this sucks. Like, you guys are like nickel and diming everywhere. Like, how do you guys pay your rent? And they're like, oh, we take odd jobs here and there. I got to wait tables. I'm like, well, I'm a teacher.

I got a salary. I'm going to enjoy this. And I'm going to just, and I we take odd jobs here, there. I got to wait tables. I'm like, well, I'm a teacher. I got a salary. I'm going to enjoy this and I'm going to just, and I'll take some money out of my salary and, you know, pay for myself to make some fun music and have cool. And if somebody ever offers me more money than I make as a teacher, then I'll pursue this full time. That was probably like, that's that point in the movie where you're like, oh shit, they're foreshadowing it. So I spent a summer in San Francisco with another rapper and i'm getting paid as a teacher over this summer

so i'm doing all right but i'm staying in his the one bedroom he rented out of a house sleeping on the floor and just watching him work and watching him collect fifty dollars a day from rapping on the street corner watching him collect some more money from rapping in the subway watching him do uh you know other uh small gigs watching him show up to concerts and offer his services and be like hey guys just give me 50 bucks and i'll do a half an hour set and just feeling like this guy's like he's on it like this is super cool and he made me fall in love with the lifestyle and then come that september this is 2010 i went back to work um and i was going through some other transitions as well this was uh you know i had as a teacher i had invested money in 2008 came wiped it all out like with many people's stories i had a relationship that

just ended that the month of september and i had a falling out with a really good friend so i'd been going through so much transition and i was was like, I got to do something. Like, I don't know what to do. And then a producer I was working with was like, man, I can get you a deal. I can get you a deal worth 120 grand. Like, you'll be good. And I was like, wow. Like, that will not only, that's more than I make as a teacher, way more.

That also will help me, like, kill this debt that i'm in you know because right now i'm just making the minimum payments from my salary this is awesome so like i jumped into it i quit the job and i jumped straight into it only to find out that it wasn't real smoke and mirrors so you leave behind the steady job the teaching thing yes end of 2010 i'm all in on the music thing based in no small part on a promise that turns out not to be a real promise. Yes. But the promise, what that really did was that that really touched upon my consistent pattern of cutting corners and wanting the easiest way out. I wanted the quickest way to get out of debt.

I wanted the quickest way to get out of this teaching job that no longer felt fun, probably because most of my rest of my world was kind of going through so much transition. So I always cut corners. You know, I could have been I could have spent 10 years and become a doctor. I could have spent three years and became a lawyer. And I actually was I had just written my LSAT that year and said, you know what, I'm leaving teaching. I got to be a lawyer. I got to challenge myself more academically. but also I got to make more money because this debt isn't going away.

So at the same time, like on the one side of your brain is like, this is me. This is what I want to do. I've seen the lifestyle. It's really cool. And there's something tugging me. But then the other side of the brain is, but in a practical level, I still need to walk that safe path. I need to go get my advanced degree.

I need to certainly build that out. Yeah, I got there. They were battle-rapping each other. They were battle-rapping each other, because I was working with him for a while, and he was just like, look, man, your stuff's good. Your stuff's great. People need to hear this stuff.

And that was a story a lot of people told me, but they weren't cracking the code as to how do I monetize this? How do I make money from this? This is before you're getting AdSense money. This is before you have sponsorships. And that's when he goes, yeah, I got the deal. Here, you know, here's some paperwork. He emailed me a PDF and it said 120 grand.

I was like, this is cool. And it was like a record label out of Japan that he had always been telling me that he sends beats to. So like, this is perfect. They got the money. He was like, yeah, he goes, they got a massive market out there. Maybe we'll get a tour off this. We'll be good. We'll be full-time musicians. We'll get to live the life, you know, pretty much be Kanye West. And, uh, I was living with my parents at this time. So that's, that's why I was able to kind of, you know, save money at this point. And I had a rental property that I owned. I made an investment years before any of this.

And what ended up happening was I kicked my tenant out to move into that condominium, being like, that's it, I gotta live the artist's life. Can't be around my square parents. I gotta do this. And then it took a year for me to realize that the deal wasn't coming. His excuses weren't real.

When he realized he ran out of stories to tell me, he disappeared. And then at this point, I had just taken my debt and just almost doubled it because I was living off credit cards and lines of credit because I had no sources of income. Yeah.

But I mean, you made a really interesting decision then also, which is that like, you're deep in it at that moment. Yeah. Right? You've amassed a really substantial amount of debt. So on the one hand, the call to go back into your LSAT and go back to some mainstream profession is probably stronger than ever,

but you made the decision to double down, essentially, on the creative side of things. Yeah, but I do believe that in my heart I thought that 120 was coming. That 120 would have wiped it all away. Right. So. So it wasn't simply like, I'm chasing this with my heart. The first probably seven months when I thought the check was in the mail, it was, it was heaven. You know, I was literally feeding myself inspiration daily. You know, my daily routine was consuming art, going for long walks, you know, just living the dream life. I mean, like this will all get paid for.

No problem. And at the same time, still making my mortgage payments now on this condominium that I don't have a tenant keeping up. And by the time 2011 was coming to an end, because I was also getting, Humble the Poet was getting traction. Right. You're starting to build a name on that side. Yeah. The name was building. It wasn't the Poet was getting traction. Right. You're starting to build a name on that side. Yeah. The name was building. It wasn't building as fast as I thought it was.

It wasn't full-time pay a mortgage type money. I was maybe making $500 to $1,000 a month, maybe, you know, from gigs here, there, certain deals, a film on to use the music, they want to license it. I didn't have a lawyer. I didn't have a manager. I didn't have anything at this point. And then I had a lot of denial. in music, the one to license it. I didn't have a lawyer. I didn't have a manager. I didn't have anything at this point. And then I had a lot of denial. I really wanted this money to come through. I really thought this was my ex-mac and I really just thought like,

the cavalry is coming. This check's going to come in. Everything's going to be great. I'll wipe out my debt. I think my debt was like 40 grand. And I'll have a lot of money to play with. And I'll just be the weirdo artist and chase the inspiration and we'll be good. So where do you go from there?

I mean, so when I when I finally have that moment where I was like, there is no money, there never was any money. Like this is a year later and now you're an $80,000 debt. You know, it was a dark time that was that was just medicating myself and just lying in bed and just being in denial and just being pissed off at everybody and being. Hating myself for being so stupid because I always felt I was smart and I was like, how could somebody so smart be so stupid at the same time? Like, how did you why did you do this? Why did you believe him? What part of his stories even made sense? And in addition to everybody else now saying, I told you so, you know, including my family. So for a long time, I hid it from everybody because I was too scared to be embarrassed. That was probably a good solid

two months. I lost a bunch of weight. I didn't, I couldn't afford to lose. You know, I went, I probably went down 20 pounds lighter than you see me now. And I'm a slim person. I stopped eating. I stopped talking to people. I owed people money. I didn't just owe the banks money. I owed friends that I cared about. I owed them all money.

I just avoided everybody for two weeks. So there's a certain amount of shame that's setting in around this. Shame, guilt, anxiety, regret. I had the whole salad bowl. I had it all. It was all dressed. It was a full party. Yeah.

What snaps you out of this? So for the longest time, I told people I was lying in bed and I heard a J. Cole song and it's called Dollar in a Dream Part 3. And he has lyrics that said, so what are you going to do?

Are you going to grow bitter and grow cold? Which I was. He goes, or are you going to flip that dollar and turn it into your dream? Be a scholar and a fiend. Watch a pawn become a king. And I know I'm not quoting it properly.

And I told people, because that did get me out of bed. When I heard those lyrics, it was probably nine in the morning. I got out of bed and I did have an energy that I didn't have before. And the energy was, take responsibility. own this,

figure it out now. No one else is helping you. No one's coming to save the day. Figure it out now. What I do realize too, is I do feel like that two weeks in bed probably was important as well. Probably I shouldn't have taken all the drugs I took, but the two weeks in the bed was probably good enough for me to, to heal from the heartbreaks that I was going through that I hadn't dealt with, you know, months prior, the year prior almost. And also this friend who I trusted being betrayed. I never thought, you know, as a heterosexual male, I never thought another guy could break my heart. But I realized was now looking back, I don't have any brothers. I never thought another guy could break my heart. What I realized was now looking back, I don't have any brothers. I don't have any biological brothers. I have two sisters.

So I really turned this guy into my brother. I really loved him as a brother. And to find out that it was all just one big scam really broke my heart and really put me in this place where I didn't trust myself anymore to make decisions. And I feel like those two weeks, because time is what does the healing more than anything else. You got to grieve it. I mean, you have to allow yourself to sort of like, you know, it's like sitting shiva in the Jewish tradition or like whatever the equivalent is. It's like you got to mourn. It has to happen.

And I didn't realize that. So originally I would tell people it was hearing those lyrics. But now I feel like it's a combination of healing for two weeks and then hearing those. And that was the moment I was like, you're ready. Let's go. You know, you're not fully healed, but even when you're not fully healed, you got to start walking on it. And that's when things changed.

That's when I stopped becoming that guy who cut corners. That's when I stopped becoming that guy who avoided any type of conflict, any type of discomfort. That was the moment that things changed. And I plastered a bunch of messages on my wall. I printed them all out on pink paper and it said like, sink or swim. You want a vacation? Go get a real job. You know, we're going to be humble the poet until we die. No days off. You get exactly what you put in. Pragmatic, cold, you know, the type of stuff that like a soccer dad would be yelling at his kid. It's just what I needed. I didn't need a hug. I didn't need compassion. I didn't

need pity. I needed a kick in the ass. So the first thing I did is I called everybody I owed money to. And I said, listen, I owe you money. I don't have the money. I don't know how I'm going to get the money, but I'm not going to avoid you. And you will not see me spending money anywhere else. People have owed me money and I know what it feels like. I'm not going to allow this to become that. Let me figure it out. You know? And, um, at this point people had been, you know, people who, who, but i wasn't listening to they're like look the only way you're gonna start the the process of digging yourself out of this hole you're gonna have to sell sell the place like right now i spent the first three months scrambling to continue paying the mortgage but the truth was i couldn't keep

this place up anymore and I wouldn't have any money and putting a tenant back in wasn't going to give me any income. It was just going to keep it at zero. I made decisions and messed up where I can no longer afford the luxury of having this investment property. So that was my first adult decision, which was like, you got to sell it. You're going to have to take the loss. You know know you were supposed to keep this for 20 years now you have to get rid of it after only a couple of years this was your rainy day fund this is your rainy day so i sold that the money i got from that is what went to the personal debts immediately and i remember one person i paid back um they said i'm really sorry that you had to sell your your home uh and to pay me back you

know because now people will know you know because he he was he was a punjabi guy and there's a lot of pride i'm like i don't care if people know like and that was my growth i don't care if people know i'm struggling i don't care if people know i'm in debt i think that's the reason so many people stay in debt is to keep up a certain image. I'm like, I don't care. I'll let everybody know that I'm struggling. You know, I don't care. I don't want to owe anybody money. I don't want to have that on my chest anymore.

So I paid those, and I told them, I said, and I'll get to a point where I can buy two of those. You know, I'll get there. And it was hard, you know, because that, I lived on, I had a beautiful condo on a subway station, like my condo connected to the station. So I didn't have a car. I think every time I had to go downtown, I had to see this condo. I had to face it. And it killed me. And it killed me for a long.

It only killed me until I had the money to buy two. You know, superficially, I had to have that much money until I could face that building again and not see it as a giant monument to my failure. And, you know, it took me four years to get out of that debt. It didn't happen overnight. So first it was selling my place, then it was selling all my recording equipment, selling all that fun stuff that I thought I needed, sold it all on Craigslist, moving back home with my mom and dad. The irony of it becoming that starving artist

that I was avoiding. Yeah, that like years before, you're like, oh, I don't want to live that life. Yeah, now I'm 30, I'm over 30, and I'm living at home with my parents with no idea how to earn any money. But now at least I can eat. And now the stresses of survival have disappeared.

And now I can focus on this. And at the same time, knowing like, you messed this up so bad, don't sleep in. You know, you messed this up so bad, don't let them see you having fun. You don't deserve to have fun. I stopped making music for a long time because, and I'm still shaking that mindset because music for me was so fun. I stopped making music for a long time because, and I'm still shaking that mindset

because music for me was so fun. That was a reward for me to make music. And I got to the point where you don't deserve it. Like you fucked this up so bad. You don't deserve anything nice. You don't deserve to talk to women. And I was very harsh on myself, but at that point I needed it. I messed up pretty big. I own it. I wasn't bamboozled by a genius manipulator. It was a young guy who just sold me dreams easily. And I fell for it, and I paid a hefty price, which was the tuition in my school of life. Yeah. And it was also, I mean, it was the tuition in your school of making a more powerful and more committed transition into a vocation.

Yes. I mean, the guy I am now only happened because that happened and, you know, it's so important to just- Well, it's like one of the things you write like in your book, you know, like no straight lines. There are no straight lines. Right? This is, you know, like there are, you gotta meander and bounce around.

And it's the idea is, you know, like there are, you've got to meander and bounce around. And it's the idea of, you know, there are shortcuts that get you there fast. Life doesn't work that way. Life definitely does not work that way. And it required me to ask myself, why did you think life worked this way? Like, why? Where did this? Because, again, I was also a teacher. I think popular culture also kind of promises that it should popular culture sells you the overnight wrong

yeah and it was i had to hear i think it was the founder of twitter that first said it and maybe somebody else said it before him and you know it takes 10 years to be an overnight success these weren't things i had ever heard when i was still teaching and making music you know to me this was like this stuff's easy. You know, at this point, I hadn't encountered any real challenge. Like, you apply to university, I get into university. I applied to teacher's college. Oh, it's a little bit more competitive.

I still got in. You know, nothing was consequential until I had that moment where I was like, holy crap. Like, you don't have any money you are in math you were in more debt than you were a year ago and you were struggling then and now you have zero options to earn there's like there is nothing there's currently I wasn't even selling music on iTunes back then I was just putting them down for free download so I was like you don't even know how to make money and then I had to just every single artist i met i was like how do we make money like where's the money like how do you guys make money i don't get this and learning the economics of creativity

and uh it was you know again there wasn't there wasn't that one big check that wiped out the debt i baby steps i chipped away at it slowly and slowly. I started writing for my own personal therapy and that's where Unlearn, the book came from. The book came from me being so sick of hearing motivational quotes and Tumblr quotes and all this other stuff that's just promising you to make life feel better. But there's no pragmatism to it. There was no practicality to it. None of it was going to help me get out of debt. Telling me to don't worry, God has a plan. God doesn't close the door without opening a window. Like all this stuff to me was just cheesy and corny. And like, how is this going to help me pay my mortgage? How is this going to help me pay back my friends? And I started writing and those

are the conversations I had is, you know, I, when I started writing them, I started sharing them with my followers on Facebook. And they were the ones that said, you should write a book because they started connecting with it, too, because I realized we're all in the same boat. You know, even to this day, I can leave conversations of philosophy and start talking about how to get out of debt, financial literacy. And people really, so many people are suffering with that by themselves, you know, and me saying like, kids, the real thing you're going to, you know, dream about what, what real adults dream about is having a zero balance on that credit card. They don't dream about the things that, you know, that you think you're going to do. Like, this is what matters. And don't sign up for that credit

card when you're in university, even though there's 50 stalls around your frosh week. And financial literacy was a big one, realizing that, wow, my parents were really good with money, very frugal with money. That didn't mean I was, because I was the youngest.

I had the privileges. I wasn't there when we had 15 uncles and aunts living in the one-bedroom apartment. I wasn't there. By the time I was the youngest. I had the privileges. I wasn't there when we had 15 uncles and aunts living in the one-bedroom apartment. I wasn't there. By the time I was born, my parents had figured out how to get a house. Nah. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.

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Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. So over the last, really, it's really just been the last four or five years that everything has kind of substantially turned around and it's you putting your head down and saying okay not only am i going to do the work to pay back everyone i need to pay back but i'm going to do the work that creates that grassroots every day, grind it out, groundswell that every musician has talked about,

having to put their head down and do, and tour and do things for free. And you go to all these different places and show up in rooms where there are six people and three of them are there for like whatever's being free and doing that for years and then slowly learning how to like build and build and build.

I mean, it's so fascinating to me that like this whole time, there's a part of you that, there's always a part of you that knows like, I'm really academically smart. You know, I could very easily at any given moment, even like as we sit here today, any given moment,

you could very easily turn back to that side of you, to the math side, the IT side, and step into a career in that path where you have a great paycheck, stable job, and do all this stuff. And yet, a switch was flipped in your brain that said, that is not an option. There's the creative side to me. And the only thing, you know, like worse than letting it out is keeping it in. 1,000%. 1,000%. There's a lot of suffering, but still like the only thing that's more suffering is, you know, there's still a lot of joy too, but like not doing this would be even worse.

Yeah. I mean, we all grow up in a zoo. And then every so often we get exposed to the jungle. And I think, you know, the bubbles that I had, I had a very comfortable cage. And I was plugged in to the economy and I was plugged into the system. And art wasn't something I created. Art was something I consumed. You know, art was what I watched after work.

Art was what I played on the radio when I got stuck in traffic. And the moment I saw what freedom could look like, which is the jungle, it excited me. Because I was like, oh, there's much less constraint here. But what I hadn't thought about is, yeah, but there's also nobody there to feed you. There's also nobody there to protect you. You're going to have to figure this out by yourself. And any animal you encounter may not be a friendly zoo animal now. They might be looking to rip your head off. And I got my head ripped off a few times and I got my butt kicked a few times. And that's when I, and it's no different than somebody moving out to New York from a small town. You know, they get,

they get, they get their butt kicked a few times, the skin gets a little bit thicker, and then they graduate to become a New Yorker. And I think it was the same thing with me. It was just me and life in general. It was just, you know, and now my relationship with freedom and my relationship with all of this has dramatically changed. I realized that the romantic idea of like, oh, I'm gonna leave a nine to five so I can, you know, do whatever I want. Well, you're leaving a nine to five to work 24 seven. Yeah. That's the trade-off. I mean, do you feel like, so you're at a point in your career now where you've had a nice level of success, where you're well-known, where you have a certain amount

of freedom, financial and creative too, you've built back, you know, to stand out there and create the work that you want to create and do what you want to do and continue. You're still early on, you know, you got a lot of years left to do this. Do you recognize you? Do you feel like there was a moment where you're kind of like, I've turned the page?

Do you feel like you're there now? Or do you feel like that moment exists? I was waiting for that moment. I was waiting for that moment to be like yo you're you're no longer struggling and you can be that artist that you thought you were in 2011 there was a lot of trauma i went through i found light at the end of the tunnel because I dug, I clawed, I fought. And, you know, you don't exit a war zone, you know, unscathed physically or mentally. So there was a lot of becoming self-aware of who I was. So what ended up happening was, you know, as, and everybody can relate to this, as you kind of climb to the next level in any capacity, whether it's intellectually, financially,

you get access to new circles where your achievements are dwarfed. You know, make a million dollars, you're going to meet a bunch of people with $10 million. Welcome to New York. Welcome to New York, where the hierarchies, you know, you can't even think in terms of a hierarchy anymore. You climb one ladder, make it to the top, then you New York, where the hierarchies, you know, you can't even think in terms of a hierarchy anymore. You climb one ladder, make it to the top, then you realize you're at the bottom of another ladder. I think for me, when I started going out to L.A. a lot and meeting people who were making enormous sums of money, super successful, being creative, like living the dream. These are Hollywood elites. Seeing that they weren't happy. And it wasn't that their job was making them happy. successful, being creative, like living the dream. These are Hollywood elites. You're seeing

that they weren't happy. And it wasn't that their job was making them happy. It was that life is full of challenges no matter who you are. It doesn't matter what your circumstances are. You can win the Powerball. You're going to have a challenge the next day. This is what life, this is the contract of life. You know, you solve one problem, you create another one. And that really got to me in the beginning emotionally because I was still struggling financially and I was kind of resentful. I mean, like, how are you making a hundred grand a month and you're crying right now over a girl? I can't even afford to cry over a girl. I can't afford to waste calories even speaking to a girl.

I can't take a girl out to dinner for her to not call me back. You know, I can barely pay my phone bill right now. And you're crying over like these petty things. It's not even real. But what that also eventually did was made me realize that, hey, you'll be in the same position when you're in their tax bracket. You're going to have, you're still going to have problems. This money is not going to make you feel better about yourself. This money is not going to make it easier to about yourself. This money is not going to make it easier to trust people. With the money is going to come new challenges. You're never going to be able to kick your feet up and be like, I made it. What's going to happen is life will never get easier.

You just have to continue getting stronger. And now you just have to decide, are you going to keep climbing? Are you going to keep playing this video game the way you're playing it, which is earn more, you know, get out of, we had to get to zero. That was important. And then once we got to zero, we realized, hey, if we know how to go from negative 80,000 to zero, then we know how to go from zero to the moon. And then I started focusing on that. And then that started spilling into my creativity and being like, oh, am I making music for the sake of making music or making what's going to work? What might get the views? What might be on brand or on trend?

And I found myself getting lost in that. And a lot of that had to do with the people I was around. They weren't necessarily bad influences, but we all identify the gaps in our lives in relation to the people we're around. You know, somebody has lower body fat than us, and we think we got to fix that. If somebody has a better household situation, then we think about that. If somebody has more money, then we think about that. And it was only recently, probably in the last maybe two years, where I said to myself, you have to chase the fun. You have to chase the fun. And it was probably through meeting some people who said to myself, you have to chase the fun. You have to chase the fun. And it was probably through meeting some people who said,

look, you know, I think in the beginning it was like, hey, will I, you know, will I learn something? Will I earn or, you know, or will I get exposure? Like those are my three things. You know, it has to be two out of three to say yes to any opportunity. And then I met somebody else who's like, like what about the fun number one should be fun if you're not gonna have fun you know unless it's a ridiculous paycheck you know it should probably be a no because if you start making a lot of money doing stuff that you don't like that's a whole different type of prison and that's why a lot of these

people aren't happy because they you know sometimes especially i was with a lot of people in the youtube community a lot of these guys started in their because they, you know, sometimes, especially I was with a lot of people in the YouTube community. A lot of these guys started in their early twenties, having fun, being silly on YouTube, and they built a huge following. Now they're pushing 30 and just the person they were that got part, they're not that person anymore, but their audience isn't responding to their evolution. Right. They want you to stay in a container. Yeah. Be that silly person that, you know, like dance monkey, like be that same person. And that's what I realized is like, Hey,

don't do what works. If you do what works, you'll forever have to chase it. You'll always be chasing, you know, uh, just pave your own path, create a community and suck them in deeper and deeper as you go deeper and

deeper. So, you know, like even with this book, this book is very simple to read. This book So, you know, like even with this book, this book is very simple to read. This book is, you know, it's, the language is very simple because this is the introduction to this journey.

Yeah, I mean, we should probably talk about the book a little bit. You know, in an interesting way, we've actually been talking about the book the whole time. The book is what saved, writing the book is what helped me get here. Right. It saved my life.

And fundamentally, you know, like it's a compilation of 101 short ideas you know that were awakenings or moments of reckoning or prompts so many of which you shared just through your own story completely you know and it's called it's called unlearn which i kind of yeah it's a cool title but it's kind of like okay so we've all learned to be a certain way in the world and this is how you get there. And, you know, part of the process is, you know, there's a certain amount of learning about, you know, like a different way. But also before you do that, there's a certain amount of unlearning that has to happen. Yeah.

And that's what I realized as I went and as I started making progress. I was like, I'm not picking up as much. I'm letting go a lot more, you know, and I had to let go of my expectations. You know, I expected people to be nice to me as long as I was nice to them. You know, I expected the world to be fair. I expected to look at the world in terms of fairness, you know, and then you learn in business that there's no such thing as a fair deal. It's just whatever you negotiate and whatever made sense that day and whatever people agreed upon. And you're like, oh, like there's not even a benchmark for that. I had to learn that I have more power over my expectations and my attitude than I do over anything else and my effort.

These are the things I have power over. I don't have power over what's going to happen. How I deal with it is what I have power over. As I learned these lessons, I'd get excited to write them down. And, you know, they became the book. And then the book, you know, turned into something that I was able to use and sell at my shows. You know, I'd be doing a hip-hop show and then sell a book after. But most of my show would be me talking.

You know, I'd perform one song and then just get lost in a, you know, as Kanye calls it, a stream of consciousness. And the audience never mind. They didn't mind. And then slowly the audience went from young kids loving hip hop to mainly young girls holding the book and wanting me to read chapters from it and wanting me to sign the book after. So that incorporated that all into my shows. And I was booking my own shows. You know, I would pick a city.

I'd crowdfund it. And I crowdfunded the book as well. Right, because the original version was five years ago now, right? 2014, yeah. Right, so you crowdfund that. You put it out there. It becomes a part of your work

out in the world, a revenue source for you too as you're kind of emerging and learning again. I sold three books a day. That was my average. My average sold three books a day. That was my average. My average was three books a day. And like religiously, it would sell three books a day,

whether I promoted it or not. That's awesome. And now it's out as like a big mainstream book with a big mainstream publisher. So I guess we sit here today and like I said, it still feels like you're in this place of emergence, like you're way further into it than you were four or five years ago. But still, there's so much more coming than there is behind you, at least in terms of like this work. Yeah.

And I'm fortunate that I work with people who have come a lot farther and I can really see the pitfalls ahead of time. And that's really allowing me to set my own personal code of values and priorities to avoid some of that. So, I mean, you know, the book was independent and then three years later it got picked up by a bookstore, by Indigo. They put it on their shelves. They published it. For our non-Canadian listeners, by the way, that's like a giant bookstore in Canada. They're the biggest bookstore, pretty much the only bookstore chain in Canada. They bought all the other ones up.

And they reached out to me and said, hey, we would love to license this out and publish it under our imprint. And the moment they did, it became a bestseller in Canada. And then that's what got me the attention in the States. So this book has had such an organic, like it didn't have an overnight success. It went three years independent. Then it became a nationwide phenomenon in my home country. And then it went international after that. Yeah, which is kind of fitting for the journey you've been on. 1,000%. You don't skip steps.

You know, there's no elevator, escalator, or even stairs to the top. You literally have to crawl up the side of the mountain. And as you start climbing, you start to realize, if you look at everybody who's above you, you'll never find any gratitude and appreciation. If you look at everybody below you,

you're just going to be living in fear that you don't want to be them so just have fun the reward is the climbing the reward is the view the reward are the unique experiences so that's where i'm at where i already know if i add a couple of more zeros to my net worth it's not it will not fulfill some promise that i can make to myself that I'll be content or feel certain ways. So now everything's a lot more pragmatic. It's like, okay, how much do I need to pay my parents' bills? And you know, they're getting old. I need to save up and get them an autonomous car because I don't want them to get in a traffic accident because they refuse to stop driving. You know, what do I need to do for them? How do I take care of the people I care about? And selfishly, how do I ensure I have enough money that I can jump on a flight anytime, anywhere, and not cringe when I put my credit card number in? Like,

what do I have to do when I've given myself a number and that number does not promise me everlasting happiness? That number does not give me eternal wealth. It doesn't give me eternal satisfaction. It's just, all right, this is a number where all the things that you want will be taken care of. And now be mindful when you start hanging out with all these other rich people that they might skew your number because you start seeing the things that they have. And now you want that stuff for yourself. Really know what your priorities are. And so I think I'm fortunate because I'm looking critically at those who came before me and have achieved things and I'm learning the lessons from them. And that required a lot of unlearning. That required a lot of letting go of what I thought it

meant to have success. What I thought it meant to be creative. Like, you know, there's one thing to be creative, which we all are. We all are artists and we all are storytellers. But if you want to mix that with commerce. Yeah, it's a whole different world. It's a whole different world. And you have to understand that you may actually be killing something you love. Yeah.

Because if, you know, if you enjoy painting bowls of fruit, it won't be as enjoyable when you start involving money and deadlines and people's expectations and opinions. And if that fruit has to pay your mortgage. Yeah, if that fruit has to pay your mortgage. And I realize this and I have a friend right now who's a very successful entertainer and they decided that they needed to do a new art that would never be for profit. And they throw parties. They made it all about parties now.

And nobody knows that they throw these parties. They just throw them. They organize them. They cut all the decorations up, put all the decorations up themselves. And they could hire people to do it, but they don't because they're doing it because the work is the reward. And I think that's the important part. I love that.

So it feels like a good place for us to start to come full circle also. So if I offer up the term to live a good life to you, what comes up? To live a good life is to live on your own terms and to be able to understand that you are free

to do as you please, but you are not free from the consequences of your choices. And to live a good life is to be able to own that idea where I say, I'm going to do as I please, but I won't be devastated if the consequences don't work out in my way. Because causality is rarely surprising. If you go party and eat dinner out every single night in New York, you should not be surprised when your credit card bill comes back and you're like, is that a phone number? You know, so for me to live a good life is to understand that and is to understand the importance of the world around you and the world in you and what their relationship is. And if you can do that, you can live an amazing life because this world is just fantastic. And I think the last part that I believe is essential to living a good life is to understand that you will live a better life if you view yourself as a tool and as a resource to the rest of life.

You know, we don't have a life. We are life. We're a part of this puzzle. We're a part, we're a drop in this ocean. And if we focus on being a resource for others, being a resource for this creation, not simply saying, hey, these animals are here for me to eat. These trees are here for me to cut. These people are here to help progress my career. Everybody is here for me. You'll be a lot less isolated. And we need connection with other

people. And it's a deeper connection when you focus on service instead of the ways that we're building connection right now, whether it's social media, whether it's self-pity, whether it's tribalism, you know? Instead, focus on being of service to other people, focus on being useful to other people and other things. And I think that will provide a life of a lot less resistance. Nobody really gets in our way when we wanna help.

And that will help us increase the way we feel. And it will also gift us many, many, many unique stimulating experiences. Love it. So can I ask you to share something a little, either something spoken word or something that comes to mind. Yeah, I wrote a poem in honor of my dad called Life of an Immigrant. And it's one that I do love to share because I do feel a lot of people connect with it on different levels.

So they told him the grass was greener with an endless flood of possibilities. Katrina, watch him drown in debt Land confiscated by the local government So he flies high in a jet plane Plane clothes just exposed him To the harsh winters of life But his wife won't know

About the sweat soaked in the banknotes Sweat home, boy getting grown He starts to groan, his stomach's rumbling Hungry for a better life Now he's stumbling Over foreign phonetics and those verb tenses They laughing at his accent Grown. His stomach's rumbling. Hungry for a better life. Now he's stumbling. Over foreign phonetics and those verb tenses. They laughing at his accent.

It's not an accident though. His master's in economics. Isn't honored. Most economic forefather. To hop his ass in a cab and never bother getting out. That car or his dreams. Memorize the route. And collect the fare. It isn't fair.

When they say you don't belong here. With your long beard and the towel around your head. Hear what was said. Soak in the hate. Can you relate? Life of an immigrant. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com.

Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

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