Julian Dorey Podcast - #71 - JUFU: Grinding on VINE; Going TikTok Famous; Crypto & Conspiracies

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

Julian “JUFU” Jeanmarie is a recording artist and content creator. After building a following on Vine at age 13, JUFU transitioned over to Musical.ly (prior to the app becoming TikTok).  He eventually rose to prominence on TikTok in 2019 with his Trending Sound Single, “Who R U.” Currently, he is signed to Universal Music Group (UMG). ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - The rise and fall of VINE; The early days of Musical.ly; The evolution of TikTok; Matt Brennan’s book on TikTok 28:13 - JUFU’s 2019 single, “Who R U”; The origins of “The Woah”; Influencers and the Music question; JUFU’s music background growing up 48:37 - JUFU used the internet to get ahead at a young age; The upsides of downsides of shooting for fame; Mental Health 1:14:43 - The “No Regrets” question; JUFU asks Julian about his former career in private banking; Rick Rubin’s approach to creation; Destiny vs. Created Opportunity 1:29:53 - Bitcoin and Crypto space; Revisiting the crash of 2018; FOREX is basically a pyramid scheme; Cardano; Why Bitcoin’s timing was not a coincidence; Why we need Philosophy over Investment 1:44:37 - JUFU and Julian talk Conspiracies across society; Divide and conquer politics; The Wealth Gap; Good and Bad exists in everything; JUFU talks Jordan Peterson ~ YouTube EPISODES & CLIPS: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0A-v_DL-h76F75xik8h03Q  ~ Get $100 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover: https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier  Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey  ~ Beat provided by: https://freebeats.io  Music Produced by White Hot Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

because I made this song who are you back up and redo it who are you I am you I am me no sir you are you Julian and Julian that's like literally um I made that song in 2019 before that sorry I made a song called whoa and people were just doing the whoa to it i didn't create the whoa but i made a basically a theme song for the song who made that move uh his name was uh what's cooking everybody if you are on YouTube right now, please hit that subscribe button, hit that like button on the video, and thank you as always for checking out the channel. To everyone who is listening on Apple or Spotify,

thank you for checking out the show there. If you haven't already, hit that subscribe button on Apple, hit that follow button on Spotify, and I look forward to seeing you guys again for future episodes now i am joined in the bunker today by my friend jufu aka in real life julian so we had julian squared in the studio today love that but jufu if you heard the little preview snippet of the episode out front he is the artist behind the songs who are you whoa and some others from tiktok and the kid is uber uber talented so julian had reached out to me back in the beginning of august and at first i thought it was like a joke and then it was actually him so we started talking and then a few

weeks ago i was like hey you want to come down from Brooklyn and do an episode he's like absolutely so I'm not kidding you when I tell you he rolled in here and we had two hours to shoot we even went a little over time but he was on a tight schedule and we walked right into the studio threw on the headphones and started which even when I had that mix up on time one time with Will Toms like we didn't go that fast so the first five minutes or bear with me, we were warming up a bit and then we got right into it and it was smooth sailing from there on out. But it was nice to talk to somebody who has been consistently early to things on the internet. This is a kid who was creating content when he was 13 years old. He's still a baby. I mean, he's like 21 now, so he's got his whole life in front of him but he was creating content when he was like 13 years old on vine and then was on musically which was the app prior to tiktok and built a following there before continuing to build a following on

tiktok and now over the last year or so he's been focusing a lot less on making content for the first time and more on creating music as he is an artist signed with Universal Music Group. And like I said, the kid is really fucking good. So it's great to talk with him about that. We also got into some crypto stuff. We got into some conspiracy stuff. So it's still a full-blown, nice, wide-ranging podcast. And I hope to have him down here again.

And I look forward to seeing what he's going to do next because the kid's already had some great success. And I'm really rooting for him because he's a great, great guy. I think you'll love him. That said, you know what it is. I'm Julian Dory, and this is Train Fire. Let's go. This is one of the great questions in our culture.

Where's the news? You're giving opinions and calling them facts everyone understands this but few seem to do it if you don't like the status quo start asking questions been waiting to say this julian what's going on on, man? Hey, man. Me in the building. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling great, actually. You're looking great, man. Woke up at six, not six in the morning, I'm bugging, nine in the morning to come here. And I haven't been like this deep in Jersey in a while, definitely.

I used to live in Jersey, actually, for like four months in Colts Neck, if you're familiar with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I was living out there for a little bit. When was that? That was from November into March this year. So November 2020 into March 2021. What were you doing out there? So I have a couple of friends who live in a house, like a big house in Jersey.

Colts Neck, yeah, it's probably a fucking monstrosity. Yeah, and the neighbors definitely don't like us but but um yeah like i went i visited the house uh because i have a record with one of the people who live there and um i visited the house one time i was like yo this would be fire if we turn this house into like a into like a content house situation and like brought in brand deals and like just turned it into a really like productive house and um i ended up moving in there and that was the idea um so what'd you guys do just like creating content the whole time or essentially that was the plan um it didn't

necessarily go exactly as planned for me, at least. And, yeah, I just don't live there anymore. But it was definitely a good living and learning experience for sure. Just like having the experience like living with a bunch of different people who come from different places, have different just mannerisms, like living with people versus like hanging out with people on a regular two different things like you get a whole different like understanding of like who somebody is when you live with them god damn right dude it was it was it was a good it was interesting experience i always tell people don't live with someone until you marry her yeah i'm sorry excuse me other way around live with someone before you marry her it's like oh smart you know she better be able to live with you too it's like it's a very

hard thing and then when you have roommates in college and stuff obviously like that's not a relationship but still it's like you learn a lot you're 100 right you learn a lot about people everyone's got their own different ticks their own different ways that they need space and then not need space sometimes it's it's a different vibe i was in my room like most of the time how many people were in there um it was a five bedroom house but it was like nine of us in there and we made it work wow that's i mean we had the space to do it it was just five bedrooms but we turned non-bedrooms into bedrooms sure yeah and cold snack you could probably do that yeah but who was like what kind of people were in there just like other creators or musicians specifically uh me being one of the artists in the house um

there was also a dj um he still is there we have the same manager so like everything's like good blood um but uh yes it was me a dj a pizzeria owner uh um security guard who also has music aspirations and he's dropping music um and like two girls uh there's there you go there's like basically and those two girls like they were growing their tiktok simultaneously of living there photographer videographer was living there um but like it was a it was an interesting interesting experience overall yeah and you're not like a newbie at all and this this is what has me really curious and yeah by the way like first person to roll up with the crew today i was loving it mom and dad downstairs this is great this is like important we've made it yeah i've learned that they are all i have they're literally all

i have and um in a way i'm all they have because like like, I'm their only son. So it's like they're, sheesh, how do I put this? Like, I'm just the only son. You might know what I mean by that. Like, it's a very, like, there's a different way that you're raised when you're the only one. And it could be a, there's great aspects to it and there's negative aspects to it depending on your perception of of the situation but um i'm very thankful for them overall i agree a thousand we we have two julians in here yes only children julian and julian i should have did a grand intro like julian and julian no i i would i would say you just described that pretty

perfectly it's like anything else there's upsides there's downsides but like if you have a great relationship with your parents too which you clearly do the upsides are so much better and i'll definitely say the same on my end even when i drive my mom nuts which i definitely do but it's it's got to be very different as a parent when you only have it's like you have all your eggs in one basket in a way. Because you live through your kids. And I don't have kids. I know that.

I can't understand it, but I can understand that aspect of it. And not to say that parents who have multiple kids don't live through all them too. It's just – it's a little different. It's like there's more – you probably put a little more pressure on yourself as a parent yeah i could i could i could see that i could see that um man yeah that makes me want to want to bring my parents in here real quick maybe we'll get my cameo that'd be great but you were when when i was saying about the creative part yeah how old are you right now? Been a long time. 21. Okay.

And you've been creating since you were 13? Since I was 13. Where'd you start? Early, well, it was late 13. In 2000, 2013. I aged with the years, thankfully. But yeah, basically went from... I lied, not late 2013.

I just hadn't turned 14 yet. Oh, right, so beginning of 14. Vine came out in January 2014. And I was 13 at the time. I got on the platform. I had some friends who were doing comedy skits on the platform. And their names were Comedy Kings. It was my friend Jack and Yuri, two Russian kids.

Super funny. Good friends of mine. Unfortunately, we don't speak anymore. But shout out to Jack and Yuri, wherever you guys are right now. Everything all good? Yeah, of course. It was just time. And we went to different high schools. But, yeah, they had guys are right now. Everything all good? Yeah, of course. It was just time, and we went to different high schools. But yeah, they had 500 followers on Vine.

I really wanted to reach the same, like, I just thought it was cool. I was like, dang, they got 500 followers. People are enjoying their videos in school. Let me try to do the same thing. And I got on the platform, started making comedy sketches. Like, what were you doing? Bro, it was fun. I wish we could pull up a Vine compilation.

But basically, I don't even know how to look at them right now. I don't know how to define them. It was just me playing different characters all the time. Like, I would be a crazy mom and the son. I would be a Spanish mom and a son. I would be a Spanish teacher and a student. I would just always be playing different characters and just making skits overall. That was my wave.

King Badge was one of my inspirations at the time. It was just a great time period. I would want to relive one of those days. Dude, Vine had it, man. They really had it and they blew it because one of the things that's so obvious that they figured out was the need for really short-form creativity. And I guess it was what, like six seconds was what you had for Vine?

If I'm not mistaken, 6.5. Okay, 6.5. six point let's be let's be exact here very scientific i'm with a real creator so anyway it was like 6.5 seconds and that's where you know some of these guys like the paul brothers that's where they started and there was so much talent because people use the constraints to create even better more repeatable hilarious things and i don't know how much you're like familiar with the very end of vine like how it went down do you know like that whole thing to my knowledge the only thing that i've ever heard was that the app wasn't listening enough to their creators and that kind of led to the fall of it yeah they

thought that they were infallible and so the creators were being offered money at different places and like how big did your following get on there i had 216 000 on there okay so yeah which was like for vine days it was like pretty pretty a grind. So they went to like the biggest guys, the guys with millions on there, had all the other platforms coming to them offering checks to come and create. And Vine was saying, no, no, we're not doing that. And they gave them one last chance. There was like a famous meeting out in L.A., I think. I don't know who was there, but some of the big creators.

And then they said no. And at this point, obviously, Vine's long been owned by Twitter. And so then it just folded. Because, like, of course, people are going to go where they're getting offered money. Yeah. You know? It's a lot of time that goes into that stuff. 100%.

I was really excited for Vine 2. Vine 2.0 was supposed to be a thing, but it never ended up happening. Was that going to be the founder doing that? From what I heard, I think it was the founder trying to do it and it wasn't going to be with twitter it was just going to be its own entity but never happened he probably had a lot it did happen actually briefly but it just wasn't successful he probably had a lot of intellectual property problems with that because they bought it you know so like any patents or stuff that he was using to create that i'm sure twitter vaguely owned at least things that are attached to it so yeah i mean once it's done it's done but you didn't stop you rolled right in

right i just kept going and where'd you go uh from vine yeah into musically so i mean tell people what that is they were taking musically is what tick tock is now um so basically uh my comedy skits were doing some damage i guess and on vine and vine was still around when musically came around it was just kind of it was reaching its like final months um but musically started taking my sounds from vine which they were doing for a lot of viners um and putting it under the comedy section on musically for people to lip sync to so people were basically lip syncing whatever comedy skits were on the musically list like the top sounds and stuff like that and um they were doing that with my sounds before i was even on the platform so they were just taking my sounds and stuff like that and um they were doing that with my sounds before i was even

on the platform so they were just taking my sounds and putting it up there from like vine yeah under comedy and no kidding yeah so i was like oh that's a good opportunity to you know get on the platform since they already know who i am i guess and um I did that got on the platform um and was able to grow really fast I started uh reposting a couple of my vines um which was also allowing me to create new original sounds for people to lip-sync to and then I also made uh what is it? I made several sounds we could talk about. But essentially I made, no, they took my sounds and I got on the platform finally. Got verified at like 40,000 on there.

So the blue check mark that I have on my TikTok currently has been there since 2015. Damn. When it was still a crown it wasn't a verified check mark at the time now just to stop you for one second because i'm curious about this i wasn't on musically in 2015. didn't even know it existed at the time i was pretty early at tick tock but tick tock just bought as i understand it the parent company do you bought musically and then moved it over as TikTok. How much was the UI and UX, like the user experience, similar though back then?

I'm hearing you talk about like original sounds and stuff, but like, does it look a lot like TikTok does now? Very different. Really? Very, very, significantly different. Musically was primarily like a reddish, like red, orangish color for everything on the app. Like the color of the follow button on TikTok. But that was like the primary color of the app, I would say. What do you mean like on the...

Oh, the actual app logo? The follow button. Yeah, but that... Oh, well, the logo and then just like more of the colors that they used. Like your profile, instead of white or black for your profile background, which you can choose, like the dark theme or the light theme, everybody had like a red profile. Got it.

Keep talking. I'm going to pull it up behind you too, but keep talking. And then you had a little crown on the top right of your profile picture to show if you're verified or not and um they should have stayed with the crown that's kind of cool yeah it was different um it was a it was a it was a cool experience overall um and the uh the for you page is very different like there it wasn't even called the for you. I don't remember what it was called. I think it was just Home or Featured.

It was Featured. It was Featured. Yeah, everybody wanted to be Featured. The Featured page. So is this what it looked like right behind you there? Yep. Okay. So the layout.

That's it right there. The shaping and layout is similar. Yeah, definitely. Right, but I see what you're saying. So the coloring was all different but they they even did keep the text like the font and that i'm like almost surprised at that but that's cool i think it looks it looks from far away right here it looks fairly similar but yeah they had that they had longer they had longer video previews on there too which i think

tiktok had at the beginning as well and they moved away from that but reviews yeah like where now it's more squared yeah yeah i guess it allows you to see more of what you're gonna see by a split second technically because yeah pull that mic in a little bit sorry in yeah yeah gotcha stay right up, like a fist from the face. All right. But, yeah, I was on the platform. Feature pay was very different. The For You page now is insanely smart. Like, it's scary. Like, just the amount of time you could waste on TikTok

and not even realize how much time has passed by. And musically, it definitely didn't have that effect. You'd come across a lot more lip syncing and seeing the most popular people on the platform constantly like how people were seeing the uh the charlie d'amelio's the addison raised the chase hudson's uh when tick tock was first like kind of like right building its name up but um yeah things have changed a lot yeah a lot and when did musically become tiktok 2018 roughly 2018 or late 2017 okay i'm not mistaken so and for people who have heard this before and i'm repeating and i'm sorry but when i rose up this morning and smiled at the

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Total game changer. Trend to fire at checkout. $100 off. Love you guys. I was on TikTok, like had the app downloaded while I was working in corporate America. So I wasn't creating or anything. What were you doing before, if you don't mind? I was a banker.

So I worked with ultra high net worth individuals and some companies. And I worked with a team who handled all that. And it was high octane stuff i just didn't wasn't my vibe it wasn't what i wanted to do but i worked with a lot of you have to like go to school for it and everything yes but i actually believe now that i've done it i think and i could say this about frankly a lot of jobs in amer America I don't know if this is like the state of education and I have no complaints about my college education I I really enjoyed it but I don't think I would have needed to that said yeah they wanted people out of college so that

was like a prerequisite but yeah it's more money is very intuitive it's and it's not the minute you have it figured out you're an idiot like that's just kind of how it's and it's not the minute you have it figured out you're an idiot like that's just kind of how it works and you're not gonna be computers on a lot of things now but when it comes to people right and understanding what it's like when someone's money gets involved and how personal that gets yeah yeah it's it's it's important especially at a certain level you know the the phrase mo money mo problems is very very real and it's unfortunate but i did see a lot of that so it was a great life experience but when you're working at a bank you got to ask for permission to take a shit i mean

it's like you can't do anything there so of course you can't be doing like social media stuff so i wasn't doing that but i was starting to i did work in some llcs on the side with some people and we did some creative work for like consulting for other people and so i was curious about this stuff and i saw this action moving to tiktok and this is like i want to say march 2019 something like that so i just downloaded the app and i went on there and exactly what you're talking about I guess this is now over a year into them being Tick Tock but that whole lip sync culture and everything that's what it was still prevalent and like when I would try

to show it to other people who were friends of mine they were yeah they're like fuck that yeah but the thing that i saw was that a that addictiveness was so real like i couldn't figure out like i'd go in to study it right for my first time doing it i went in for i'm like i'm gonna go in for 20 minutes i look up it's four hours later and it's not like i'm sitting here like watching all these lip syncs and and being impressed it's it's not like I'm sitting here, like, watching all these lip syncs and being impressed. It's the same shit. But I am somewhat, I noticed I was somewhat entertained at least. Right. You know, like, I was still like, wow, this is interesting.

Do you feel like the more you were scrolling, the more you would actually start to see things that you were actually interested in? At the time, at first, a little bit. Okay. Not much. It was still very much the charlie d'amelio's of the world and everyone else trying to be her yeah i remember there were like some of the guys i saw on there and i saw you pretty early on there too which was kind of funny i remember that because you were doing like omegle videos and stuff yeah yeah but there were some

guys on there who they would all be the same they'd be like some really good looking dude who just like stared at the camera and went like that with their hair or some shit and i was like that's all we're doing but then i'm looking at it and i'm like okay it's got all the 12 to 16 year olds now and the people who can appeal to them when this moves to like 17 to 21 look those people look getting older as well yeah exactly exactly and when you bring in like the same year i'm like when you start to bring in that 17 to 21 21 to 25 is going to be right behind it and now you're going to have people saying well everyone's lip-syncing i'll try something else on here yeah and then holy shit I mean now it's

there's every form of content on there it's fucking insane man if I'm not mistaken I think YouTube is shaking right now because of it being one of the I mean the biggest search engine when it comes to videos

TikTok is up in their game big time they just passed them i yeah i wasn't sure if i if that's what i heard recently yeah so i know average view time per i want to say it's per month right it was like now it's like 24 to 22 and a half in tick tock's favor fucking crazy that is insane and i always wonder what the next one's gonna be because i feel like platforms like a tiktok can last but there's an ending to everything so it's like what's next there is an ending to everything i think their ending could involve being way too careful with content. They're very, very strict with flagging content, which I think is a mistake.

Maybe they'll figure that out. But, god damn, do they have it figured out right now, man. I mean, when I first went on it, I was like, this is a perfect app. And they have managed to not fuck it up the ui continues to be beautiful the improvements they make are simple as best as i can tell for the most part right and i mean you see the action they're just like the you mentioned it a few minutes ago but the algorithm it's not even close it's far and away the best social algorithm on planet earth it's like their first second third and 50th yep it's no one else yep the only way

you know what now you say that whoever developed the algorithm for tiktok or like whoever was like the spearhead of developing the algorithm that person person needs to leave TikTok and create something else to essentially make something better. That person's not in this country. They're in China. So it's partially owned by the Chinese government in that way. So I don't know that that's going to happen. But yeah, there's a book.

This guy, I want to say his name is Matt Brennan. I actually never finished the last quarter. I feel like I've heard that name before. Yeah, I think he's somewhat known as like a VC or something like that. But I haven't read the last quarter of it now that I think about it. But I read most of it back in January. And it was, he's like in mainland China. And he's been inside TikTok and Dou and douyin the company like since the beginning

and their their foresight's insane how they viewed this thing going but their strategy was to constantly use the tech to learn not that these other companies don't do that but other companies it seems to me based on my user, they'll kind of find a lane that you like and then they'll just hit you with it over and over and it takes them a long time to adjust. So you keep skipping that content, I don't want it, I don't want it. On TikTok, during one scroll feed usage of the For You page, if you're starting to not like a certain type of content that they were putting to you god damn do they change it around to what you want it's it is crazy it is yeah i don't even i can't i don't have words for it it's it's insane it's big time insane for sure have you tried youtube shorts at all i i've put a couple of videos out on there. Not as much as I should because there's a lot of people

who have been having insane success through shorts. Literally growing a YouTube account to 2 million straight off of a short success. And YouTube is a great opportunity to get into shorts because they're still trying to push it. Similar to any platform that's trying to

get people onto it like by paying them they're giving people a lot of exposure right now so trying to post more on shorts definitely um i just i don't know why i haven't to be so honest with you like i have 140 episodes of omegle on tick tock that can easily be on you have? Yeah, I should have 200 by now, but I burned myself out with that. How did that shit work? Burned out is real. There was something else called, maybe it was. Chat roulette?

Yeah, chat roulette, I think. Like back in the day, like when I was in high school. Dang Matt Smith. I don't know if you know him. He's a YouTuber. He was like the king of chat roulette. Yeah, so that was like, I think it's the same setup. You hit a button and you're in a room staring at someone who's a stranger.

Yep. And so you were making content, like your early funny content, especially on TikTok. I think you weren't on Musical.ly with that. No, so I actually started that last year. And I made that after making a viral song on tiktok so uh that was kind of one of the the catch points on my uh on my omegle series because i made this song who are you i am you oh wait yeah that's literally because

back up and redo it back up and redo it who are you i am you i am me no sir you are you julian and julian that's like literally um i made that song in 2019 before that song i made a song called whoa and people were just doing the whoa to it i didn't create the whoa but i made a basically a theme song for the song who made that move uh his name was uh dang it man ah yo i'm putting you on the spot i'm sorry yo i feel so bad because like i know exactly who it was too because i wanted him to like feature on the song um we'll try to find it damn i'll be able to Who created the woe? Houston rapper Sauce Walker? Mm-mm

There was somebody else Oh wait, no Scott Something Scott I don't know if it was Scott No, no, like his last name's Scott I'm just looking on the It was

Dang it, bro This dude's name is like It's different too It's like a nickname almost It's like It wasn't It wasn too it's like it's like a nickname almost it's like it wasn't it wasn't chunky chunky's my friend but there's somebody else i feel like his name started with a c 10k cash tank cash 10k cash yes i knew there was a c in it 10k cash so yeah he made the world like the dance move i made a made a whoa song because the whoa is kind of popular on TikTok. So I was like, let me make a little song for it.

Made a 15 second song. Oh, you made the song after? Yeah. Interesting. So I saw the dance. I was like, let me capitalize off the dance. I wasn't thinking capitalize, but let me make a theme song so people can have a song that's specifically for the whoa instead of just doing the world to any song

um and it was just a 15 second song that i made specifically for tick tock and then when i saw the demand and the song starting to go viral then i was like let me make a full song and put it out i was a little late to like putting it out but um everything that i did not do for the release of Woe, I made sure that I did successfully for Who Are You? Such as having the entire song already ready before actually putting it out. Having the legal stuff done properly before putting it out. How does that work? Legal stuff as in the beat like

the beat for whoa it was just a youtube beat that i found i never contacted the producer i just put it out and it started going viral and he was like so um i had to definitely uh figure that out because i definitely could have gotten sued horribly if um if i didn't take care of that the right way that's what fetty wap did with trap queen really yeah and they made a deal like you reached out to him after but a lot of a lot of people do that but you're right you want to set it up ahead i got you so with uh who are you i found this beat on youtube and i was like this is fire let me record to it so i didn't reach out to the producer yet um so i recorded the song first i didn't put it out yet but i recorded it then i reached out to the producer turned out

to be a 13 year old kid from south carolina and uh yeah i was like yo bro i like this song um i made this song to your beat and this is my tick tock i'm gonna blow it up on tiktok for you i made this wolf song before and uh he was like super excited for it yeah and um i didn't pay him up front i just offered him 50 of the entire record which is not which is not heard of like that that's bad business on my part technically um you don't normally do that much percentage to towards the producer um but i i was just seeing it as like okay since i didn't pay him up front let me just give him 50 of it and he's a 13 year old kid so i'm gonna create a good opportunity for him yeah that's great man and um i did that and the song started to take off and from that song's release um

i put the sound i put the sound out first on tick tock 15 second sound who are you i'm you i'm me no sir you're you everybody started doing it especially twins or just people who look alike and started to get reached out to by like 15 different record labels between like after like i would say three four weeks of the song being sure yeah um i had gone to la at the time of the release i was at vidcon for a little bit um what's vidcon vidcon's a social media convention for like youtubers people on Instagram, Vine, everybody. Similar to another convention called Playlist Live. But most of those have been conventions for the last almost 10 years, if not 10 years, VidCon.

Right. But I was doing the... Yeah, I started entertaining these labels. Um, I didn't really know anything about music like that. So, uh, I got, uh, some people that I knew who were in the music industry and formerly managed an artist. Well, actually they were, yeah, formerly managing a female artist that I used to have some sort of relations with.

Some sort of relations? Yeah, so we knew her team since 2016, but they weren't working with her anymore. So what we wanted to do was, well, we needed help. We didn't know where to go with music. It was just me and my folks. And you were sticking it on Spotify and everything, obviously, like the full song. Yeah, using DistroKid.

So, yeah, how did your streams end up doing with that? The song total, Spotify alone is like 16 million streams. Nice. And all platforms combined is like 25 million something but um yeah it was it was a it was it was awesome definitely uh today's tiktok will take us on to like 30 million plus off of like one platform which is insane but um definitely um i was on the forefront of that of that transition from like from artists making a song break on TikTok

and then signing to a label if I'm not the first person to have done it I'm not too sure who was but I'm definitely one of the first three people to come from TikTok and then sign a major yeah you were I mean the story with you is you've been early your whole life. That's why, that's what I like about this. And so like,

when you and I connected, which was really cool, I thought that was like a joke. I'm like, wait a second, that's, that's not real. And I'm like, wait, I don't know this guy. That was you. But you had, you obviously have made a habit of getting to something right at the beginning and then being able to capitalize on it and you've done it very well at least twice and now your focus has moved heavily towards capitalizing on like a music career and you'll use platforms to do that but i like your talent number one and number two of course you know i knew those songs and i'm like this is great but you have a really good you have a really good

voice like a very good like kind of smooth but commanding voice in like a subtle way so when i'm listening to sounds on tic tac that are going viral they're all different they all have something entirely different to them but there's there's these little things that someone will do that just put it over the top and it's the difference between a video being or a video a sound being used a hundred times versus being used a million times or a hundred thousand times or something like that and for the ones that you created that did well the woe is pretty self-explanatory that was very smart to go in there and i didn't realize you created it after the dance move was created so that's great but then the second one the whole who are you i am you it's so catchy

and memorable but also so like clear there's no there's no like the way you did it it's it's almost like it replays in your head over and over because you're like enunciating every single word and people like their body starts to bounce like this right when they hear it you know so i think it's really cool that you've hit that the thing that's hard like the that's hard to do the next hard thing to do by my estimation now is okay how do i make consistent records that now bring in the people who are aware of who i am you know it's like an influencer on tiktok but now i'm saying i a musician right and I'm gonna make albums and even like mixtapes which people do less but EPs I should say you know I'm gonna make this stuff and people are

gonna get a full gamut of what I can do and I'm gonna be very consistent with putting it out and creating things that aren't just um creating for a 15-second TikTok sound? Right. So definitely that's a big challenge for many people that come from the influencer world trying to transition into music. And I feel like the only thing that really makes it stick for the audience is the one, consistency, but two, the talent has to speak for yourself i feel like there's a lot of uh influences that transitioned from from a social media standpoint who had a big

following into music and there's a lot of situations where some of those people who had a very big following make and started making music didn't necessarily have the desire to make music but it's just the business play led that led them into that direction and um i feel like that kind of that's what kind of creates the stigma of uh of a uh not the stigma but like it creates a a mindset that a lot of people tend to have like oh this person started started on youtube or this person started on Vine. So he's not an actual artist. We have people like DDG. He's a very successful YouTuber who's been making a lot of noise in music recently.

And the only way he was able to do that, like people weren't taking him seriously enough when he was dropping music like three years ago. But over the last year and a half or so, he's been super consistent. Videos, videos, starting to get bigger features. Is it good? Yeah. Exactly. And his music is just evolving. Yeah.

And it's just been very consistent. I've seen a lot of people come from TikTok, start making music, and only drop one or two records, get a lot of backlash for those records and then the music kind of just like stops they can't take it i guess that's literally what it is but i mean they do make a good quick bag off of the people who were curious enough to listen to for the first time but um definitely like people like a ddg um i definitely, I would say I look at him as like, he did it and he's doing it. And I'm very, I love that. I just, shout out to DDG. Shout out to DDG because I feel like he's standing for people. I don't know if he's intentionally doing this, but he's technically

standing for people like myself who come from a social media background or started from a social media background, but also have a musical background. Yeah, you've been into music for a long time. I've been into music since 2016, yeah. And that's a key difference here. Yeah.

Because I remember when we talked on the phone, I think we should also talk about where you went to high school and stuff. This is in your blood. There's an important distinction with some, not all of of them But some of the people you're talking about where just to be clear These are people who maybe never even created a bar let alone a song and now they're just famous and because they're famous They can pay for studio time. They have a team someone's right exactly And it's not good. I mean it i've heard some before where it's like all right that's not the worst thing i ever heard you know like if you have the best people around you

maybe something you can shit out something okay but some of it is fucking awful man and it's like it's like screeching in my ears you know so like you at least come from oh i've been creating things this for like like this for a long time and what was the what was the situation with your high school again so uh before high school i started playing guitar since 2009 so i've been kind of just trying to serenade girls on the guitar since i was nine years old now you're playing acoustic electric i started with like acoustic and then i got my first electric i was like for like my 11th birthday or 12th birthday. I still have both of those guitars.

That's a fucking panty dropper, man. I remember I was learning Justin Bieber songs in elementary school to sing to my crush. She loved this. She loved Bieber. Yeah, fast forwarding into high school, I didn't do any music in middle school. I actually did have one guitar class in middle school. It was in the computer room. It was weird.

But yeah, in high school, I wanted to audition for LaGuardia, which is a performing arts school in Manhattan. Nicki Minaj went there, and a lot of many successful people went there. I was too nervous to audition for that school, going into there. I ended up auditioning for the high school that I went to, which is Edward R. Murrow High School, probably like 20 minutes away from my house. I think we said this, but you're in Brooklyn.

Yeah, Brooklyn, New York. Yes, sir. Where Brooklyn at? But, yeah, we outside. But basically, I auditioned for my high school messed up on my audition so i got in for communication i didn't even get in for guitar um and then i ended up yeah just going to everywhere i remember high school and that school was super super dope my first two years i was in the basic guitar class because i had to work my way up now and into the advanced guitar program but it's like an art school yeah exactly that's

why i like across like there's some people who i went to school with who are currently on like broadway now which is like super odd i saw you see i i hate that i forgot this kid's name but i literally i was walking on like 50 like 57th and broadway and um literally like a block away from my label which is universal music group is like on 57th and i think i swear it's on 57th and broadway but um literally like a block away from there i saw like a west side story advertisement and i saw a picture of my of one of my former former schoolmates I was like that's awesome it's super sick to see because like I remember going to the school and like always hearing about all these all these notable alumni who went to the school and um yeah let's

go into 2016 uh after the guitar program they actually opened a music technology program that's what we were talking about I couldn't music x technology so that was sponsored by levi's and alicia keys and joey badass also contributed joey badass went to my high school um alicia keys visited the high school and performed when that program opened oh that's so cool it was awesome holy shit people in the the kids in the chorus program got to meet her sing with her on stage and how good is she man amazing in person like amazing it's it's amazing it's got to be on i didn't i didn't get to interact with her directly but she's a phenomenal human being um very inspirational we forget about her too like she she does not get the love and respect like she's huge she's Alicia Keys but she doesn't get enough she gets it but she's not always in the media but that's not a I guess that's not a bad thing it depends on like

what you're doing because I know damn well if she's dropping an album everybody's gonna talk about it okay I'll agree with that yeah but definitely um the key's goat um but yeah joey badass went to my high school along with everybody in pro era kind of started in my in my high school capital steeze rest in peace uh nick caution cj fly and just multiple members of joey badass and capital and stee's were like the the the front runners of of pro era um joey visited my high school once while i was um while i was there kids were mobbing the hallways and everything and um yeah the music technology program was awesome i had a really awesome relationship with the teacher mr riley um actually picked up the camera for the first time there and developed a passion for film as well.

But yeah, I learned how to produce. I learned how to record myself. And over the course of 2016 into 2017, I was taking my skills from that class and bringing it home and starting to record parodies for musically content. What do you mean parodies? Parodies. So I was taking popular songs and switching the lyrics and just recording. So like the Broccoli song, for example, by Lil Yachty and Dram,

if I'm not mistaken. I know that song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I made a parody too. It was like, see my mama trying to make me eat this broccoli. I'm just a kid. i don't want to eat no broccoli spit that thing out because it tastes nasty i don't want this broccoli so i ain't gonna eat that went viral on tiktok over like 200 000 videos well on musically on music yeah so this is

like musically days og days og days 150,000 videos made to that. And I was just making a bunch of parodies at the time. And I have several sounds from the course of 2015 up until 2017 that have had well over 100,000 videos, some up to 400,000 videos made to my voice. But I was never really getting the credit visually visually but my voice was always being used so i i feel like a lot more people recognize my voice than my face but that's still at least you had like that that's memorable i mean you know how much with tick tock that changed the game of people before they see something they know what it's about just by the sound you know and like your voice is very very recognizable completely like you kind of know what it's about just by the sound. By the sound. You know? And, like, your voice is very, very recognizable completely.

Like, you kind of know what it is right when it's coming on. It's good times, man. But, yeah, I was taking the skills from that class to record those parodies. I didn't know how to record myself before that. And... You built a whole studio? I didn't really have a studio built like I do now. Yeah, your studio now is sick.

It's really fun. I love my studio now, especially just what I'm able to make out of it. But essentially, I was doing all those parodies and stuff, and then I wanted to start taking music more seriously. So I was like, you know, I can't be doing parodies anymore. And I also told myself I can't be doing social media anymore which is a very different time period that we live in now i was like you know what if i want to take music seriously i shouldn't be posting content anymore what year was this this is 2017 like late 2017. okay so you changed your mind on that yeah

so late 2017 uh that's when i started getting more into dropshipping businesses and just like e-commerce. And e-commerce led me to learn about crypto. And that's when I got into crypto, which is what I was telling you about. But we only had like three minutes when you walked through the door. We got right on camera when you came through. So we didn't get to go deep in this. Maybe we will now.

But it's really i'm very jealous of you because in a healthy way because i didn't fucking have any of this stuff figured out when i was 13 14 15 16 17 i was literally like going to class right and we had the internet and everything i'm a little older than you but all that shit was there maybe not to the same extent but you just get yourself in every kind of action i love it it's a blessing that occurs because like because i love doing so many different things and i feel like i'm i'm skilled in in several different things but like the best thing to do in life is is to to hone down on like specific on a specific craft unless your time management skills are just superb like some

elon musk superb because based on what he says his day is like is is people can't do that it's crazy he's an alien he's not normal i want to be an alien soon man but um yeah like i got into i stopped making uh content for like almost a year, I want to say. I had 600,000 followers on Musical.ly at the time. And then when I came back, it was TikTok. And yeah, I took that break to just kind of focus on making more serious music. And that was kind of leading into my transition into college from high school. Did you go to college?

I went to college for a year. I didn't know that. Yeah. Where'd you go? FIT, Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. Nice. So like right there. Yes.

It's definitely one of the most renowned, if not the most renowned fashion school in the world. My mom went there before I went there. She went there like 25 years ago or so don't date your mom she doesn't look at that over 35 I she's awesome I love my mom um but yeah I guess definitely very proud moment for her to for me to get into that school also the film program only accepted 30 people per year well per semester um so it was i was pretty lucky to be amongst one of those 30 people and um yeah i studied film for a year there and then dropped

out when the music started to just like really take off so the semester already ended before i put out who are you um this is 2019 yeah and uh like over the summer like the question for me and my family is like is julian going back to school because all these label meetings started happening and pretty much every label like we're in this we're on the same page like you probably won't have the time to be able to be going to school like that. Fun fact, I was supposed to tour last year in March 2020, but pandemic started right there. Oh, that sucks, man. Ten days after pandemic was supposed to be, like,

my first tour date locations. And that's the best marketing there is because that's, like, boots on the ground, people in front of you, face-to-face. There's a connection behind the person now more than you can get on social media I cannot wait man I'm just trying I want to tour the entire world I want to go even if I if like I know I have less five people that support me on the island of Fiji I want to put on a show for those five people like that's just the way I look at it I want to be

able to like actually like social media is cool and you can really impact people through the internet but like i want to be able to like have that that face-to-face connection with everybody that supports me yeah and you you put yourself out there well i mean it's pretty clear like right away you're talking with me like some rando on the internet just like trying to figure out how podcasts work and things like that like you're curious and and i think people when you're building a relationship with like a fan base for whatever it is when you have that gene you know that laid back extroverted gene like like you have that's that's a big help because then people you're very approachable and then people get more curious about what you do like beyond maybe even just music and you have so many other things there so it's like you have a lot of really good tools

that make you older than you are in a lot of ways you know a lot of people don't figure it out like you have and i think what i'll add to that and this is like a weird like gray area but you got big on social media very young but you didn't get like bieber you know what i mean like you didn't you didn't go to like mainstream every i watched sean mendez do what he did from inception and now sean mendez is one of the biggest people on the planet when it comes to music wait where did he because sean mendez blew up with stitches started on vine he's making covers on vine that must have been right because i remember stitches came out like end of 2014 so he must have been right away yeah like after after touring dude of like through vine he was able to tour i didn't know that yeah he was on tours like conventions called magcon uh digi digifest and stuff like that um there was like the same way there's a charlie

d'amelio for tick tock nash greer was the was the the face of vine in a way nash greer yeah dash greer cameron dallas has like 20 something million on instagram Instagram now. I know that name. Nash, he has a family now. He's just chilling, laid back. Still has his core supporters that really grew with him on Vine. Who was, I don't remember him. I don't think I do. Him and his brother. They just had silly Vines.

Silly Vines. Yeah, they were really popping. And Shawn Mendes was kind of a part of their group called MagCon. And they would tour the United States and meet all their fans. And it's crazy now, full circle, me and Shawn are on the same label. He's the flagship of my label, though. And that's exactly where I need to get. Yeah.

So he blew up. And he was also older than you, early. But he blew up. How but like, so he blew up and he was also older than you early, but he blew up. How old was he when he blew up? Probably like 20, 15. No, he's younger than that. Like he's, he's only like two years older than me. He's not young.

He has to be like no more than three years older than me. Shawn Mendes has to be like 24-ish. Let's see. 23, 24. Dead on on man august 8th 1998 23 years old wow so he was he was really young when he blew up i didn't know that so yeah but like someone like that blown up young all these other guys blowing like blow and blowing up young in a way i i always feel bad for that too because it's very very hard pressure yeah the pressure health the hormones you know what i mean like you're going through puberty and suddenly like

if you're justin bieber's obviously like an outlier he's a whole nother level but like if you're justin bieber and you're 13 and every every single female between the ages of 12 and 17 is grabbing you everywhere you go it's i mean look a lot of us are like that's a great problem to have but at the same time perspective it's not normal yeah you know and then suddenly it's like you can't go and you can't do anything without people having attention on you and that's hard whereas you got recognizability and you've also done it like in phases here in different ways but you've also been able to maintain like you you got to grow up you got to be able to be with yourself

you can walk down 57th and broadway and it's not you're not getting mobbed right now which i know you want that but that's a good problem to have at this point yeah i agree on that um definitely just just to tap back on Bieber for a second, I feel like definitely just the pressure and the effect on mental health that it can have when you have all that pressure on you and you're experiencing all these things at that young age definitely contributes to why he had those low points in like 2017 sure and stuff like that but it's like super awesome to see to like watch somebody's like growth and um yeah shout out to beaver yeah

i actually i have a ton of amazing amazing transformation he also has shared it too like as you just alluded to i i have a ton of respect for it and i think some people fall in the trap of oh god another celebrity saying whatever it's like dude yeah i i know he's got a lot of money and he's got a great life very hot wife and everything but the the challenges and the damage that can be inflicted upon you right from doing that is just it's a lot and and i i don't know what that's like but i could imagine i can only imagine myself even at age 20 i wasn't mature like you but you know let's go to like age 16 17 like for whatever getting famous right jesus christ man i might be dead in a ditch at 26 like I don't know

how I would have ever been able to deal with that and I think a lot of people throw stones unknowingly from glass houses because it's like well what would you have done you know what would how would you look at the world it's not you can't know

but you also might be able to understand a little bit and it's one thing if someone's an asshole but to me Justin Bieber seems like a pretty chill guy like you know and he's and he's very open about his life and i like that 100 percent um due to social media and the way that it is it's like everyone posting posting the highs of of of things uh a lot of people don't really get to see what all the work somebody is really doing like behind the scenes and all the pressure that they face and all the just everything that they really have to go through to to be able to even show those highlights on the social media in general um i think it definitely gives people a

the wrong perception when it comes to some people of a certain stature like people don't really acknowledge like all the hard work behind all the money or behind all the success what's the quote i i have said this on a podcast before and i didn't remember the quote exactly then but you're gonna know what i'm talking about. It's like every overnight success, no one saw the 10 years that led up to it or something like that. Exactly, yep. Spot on, man. Facts.

That is a big fact. It's like Beyonce right there. She's one of the hardest working artists in the world, and hence why she's Beyonce. Yeah, and all the people on this wall in a way. Literally. Some people give me shit for like kylie jenner with that argument kurt cobain yeah yeah you know who that is is that left is that whitney that's whitney young whitney it's young whitney but yeah some people

even say it about kylie though and it's like yeah yeah she is a kardashian she definitely she was the younger one like she definitely had every is a Kardashian. She definitely, and she was the younger one. Like, she definitely had every advantage in the world. But, like, you know, she is a billionaire. She created a whole beauty line. I mean, there's something there. So, yeah, but, like, overall, looking at a wall like this, it's part of the inspiration. All these other people, they're, they made what they are.

You know what I mean? Like was it was them they they did this shit so you know it's funny um that's ali right there right yeah yeah so i never acknowledged how i feel like tyson and ali resemble each other at least that that that picture of i mean even though tyson is bald now and he has that tattoo right there i feel like they're low-key resemble each other i never thought that so i just recorded a podcast yesterday that's gonna be coming out in a couple days here that you should listen to but i definitely if you're into that i just had in a guy luisa who was a heavyweight contender trained by angelo dundee who's o ali's trainer and trained with ali

sparred with him all the time and he was like he was 10th ranked in the world at his height like when he was at his best he was 19 and one at the time with like 17 knockouts or something like he was a savage to this day he's six five and a half like 297 like a fucking mammoth of a human but listening to him talk about ali and all boxing but you know especially like the guy who was like his hotel mate at fights and shit and it's just the guy was just special he was different and it's almost like now we look at guys like that because now he's gone and it's like a ghost and so yeah like you think of ollie as like a boxer but there was so much more to it so much more or to it to him so much more makes me think about uh um um why did i yeah i know his name was literally just just on my tongue

he's below him yes mcgregor mcconner mcgregor yeah yeah like i mean he he's been having a His name was literally just on my tongue. Below him? Yes. McGregor? Conor McGregor, yes. Yeah, like, I mean, he's been having a little bit of lows lately, but, I mean, I can't blame him. Like, it's just, you know, being at that level, it's like there's a lot of things you got to deal with when it comes to mental health and dealing with yourself. And I definitely have been facing that over like the last year just like dealing with real life but also dealing with like how social media

like just real life hitting me like losing people and then also having to continuously losing people as in like death and then still having to be able to feed social media at the same time and like i feel like a lot of people don't really see the the lows thankfully i was able to put a lot of those lows into my music over the last year which hasn't there's just a lot of unreleased still um but definitely like i definitely am a big advocate for just spreading awareness when it comes to mental health it actually is mental health awareness month and um just spreading positivity but also i want to just be as transparent as possible when it comes to speaking to my audience because i feel like at the end of the day we're all human and we all have some sort of adversity and a lot of the times you look at

the most successful people you don't see the adversity all the time because you're once again seeing the highlights and i want people to know that like those same people that you're looking up to can be experiencing some of those same exact things that you experience and um yeah life life is a way to put it man has been interesting over the last over the last year man what's i mean if you don't want to say anything don't but you know what's what's been going on you've been losing family members and stuff so uh i was i was talking to this girl um for some time uh probably like a little over a year me and her were romantically involved with each other and she actually overdosed last year during the pandemic very hard for me to to have to to

deal with because it was um it was something that i've never had to deal with before especially like i don't know it's just it's a different type of hurt it's like feels like something like changes with your soul but i mean essentially kind of like went through a form of depression that was like also i didn't even acknowledge it was depression last year it was just like the way that i was operating changes. I mean, you can take a step back from yourself real quick. One of the best ways to know, I mean, it depends on the type of person you are,

but normally one way to tell if you are going through some sort of poor mental health is based on your room. Based on your what? Your room. Uh-oh. Don't look at my room. some sort of poor mental health is based on your room based on your what your room like your room so like some people don't look at my room nah like it can also be some people are like just like create like creative or just don't feel like cleaning their room but for me specifically um that that was one way to really tell and then also just getting out of bed like super late and not

really having the motivation to get out of bed um but uh yeah that like all of all the things that started happening last year like around the time that you saw my omegle series is um a month well i mean i don't know what month you saw my amigos omegle series i started my first omegle video i thought i saw it earlier went then then you're saying I didn't my first video was March 21st 2020 and then because I I remember I will say this I remember you on the app in 2019 when I was looking because they're also like by the I mean maybe this was the algorithm but there weren't a lot of dudes on there there's like you know it's mostly like women on there doing lip syncs but I remember you on there I thought it was the Omegle video obviously i'm wrong about it could have been something else it must have been something else

but i do i remember those because it was always like oh my god it's true it's you it's you those were lit man um but literally like the same time that i was doing those videos um the the passing of my friend happened a little bit like a month after I started making those videos but I was still pumping those videos out and a lot of people didn't really understand like or see what I was dealing with outside of those videos because I'm one of those videos I'm smiling I'm like enjoying my time speaking to strangers in the moment like i kind of like in a way it was like a it was a very helpful thing for me as well um because like i feel like speaking to people constantly on omegle and then also just like having the support from my audience was also

like very healing for me so i definitely owe my audience and that's kind of like why i want to why i take the approach and i have the love for the people that support me the way that I do. Definitely. Yeah, you were finding, like, an outlet in that. 100%. And this is, like, after the pandemic started then? Yes, after the pandemic. So, like, when you started that actual series and everything?

But eventually, like I said, that led into, like, a burnout. Like, I was just, like, I was doing two of those videos a day, sitting on Omegle for, like, six hours at a time, and then it takes me, like, an hour to edit each video. Sure. And then I would put out two of those videos, one in, like, the early afternoon, one in the evening, and then I would go live for several hours on Omegle recording. And, yeah, that was uh eventually i burned i kind of burned out i can't do this anymore and then also it's like because i had music i was like i i can't i don't want to be the omegle guy

i want to make sure that people know that i am and i don't want to be the Omegle guy and I don't want to be the who are you guy I want to be the musician that you enjoy different types of songs from him but uh yeah I I stopped doing doing that Omegle series due to the burnout and just poor mental health and just trying to find find refine myself because i definitely started to lose myself and i only started to understand self a little bit more starting the end of 2018 like i started reading a lot more started enjoying reading a lot more first time i enjoyed like really enjoyed reading 2016 rich dad poor dad by robert kiyosaki yeah and then picked up books again in 2018 i was gonna ask you if you're a big reader but i already knew

the answer you're such an intellectual guy i love audiobooks but um the power of the subconscious mind uh the power of now um that's on my i have that bought i have to read that that's a really good book um what else uh there's a think and grow rich and it's like all books like that like really started to spark like and then just watching a bunch of things on spirituality and but yeah everything started with just like the power of the subconscious mind that book like opened so much for me. And that's when I really started to understand myself a lot more. 2018, then life happens.

So you start to kind of lose yourself a little bit. But it's important. I've been learning recently. It's very important to experience emotion and not push it away. It's a part of life. But yeah, it's been a roller coaster over the last over the last two years but I'm very very thankful for it because it's making me a stronger person and Make you I feel like everything that I've been going through is only preparing me for much more

Much bigger things that I need to be mentally equipped to to deal with i actually like when i have people in here who are very passionate about mental health especially guys too because it's an issue with you know we're dudes we don't we don't open up and those feet yo that's a fact yeah it's a fact juliet so we've had some we've had some great convos in here of people who have really, really spilled it. And I so appreciate that when they do. But I think I'm always trying to sit here and think of where the roots of that are. And they'll talk about it. You just talked about it a little bit with some of your own like personal life experiences and stuff. But I also try to figure out like how someone gets so self-aware and then open about that, especially someone with a platform, which you've had one.

And to me, A, I think it's a big help that you seem to be into like a lot of mind, body, spirit, like self-help type literature, which is huge. And so that's been an interest such that when you're reading things ahead of a low moment in 2020, even if you get down to that low, you have some tools that are in there that you can then call upon to be like, oh, I've hit a spot where I'm waking up late. I'm feeling depressed. I'm not dealing with this. What are some ways i've learned to deal with this and then you can kind of help yourself in that way which is a great thing but also you know especially when you're like a teenager and coming into your 20s you're trying to figure out your place in the world it's so weird it's like holy what am i gonna do like how am i gonna make money how am i gonna go make a name for myself and whatever it is i do and to be in the middle of that where you're also like trying to transition into being a great artist and and you get how do you get there you get there by

doing some things that most people will never experience which is go very viral with some early catchy songs on a plat built for a platform in a lot of ways and now it's like like we were talking about a little bit ago it's like all right take that next step to putting out records and and building out you know the full layers of of your own creativity and the thing about it that can make it hard when you add something like your work which is very difficult to life itself and how life goes and the downs that come with that is that you're also it's like you kind of you have the establishment of the house now you have to build the house and that part's hard you know now you have to you have to

go from being the guy who's credible because he made some viral sounds that people use for 15 seconds and they're like oh jufu to oh no this this guy's an artist this guy makes a lot i i fuck with his music all the time and i think the pressure of that when you add that to things that's got to be a lot you know and and just as a little personal aside it's it's hard for me to imagine having to work like I do now doing this as much as I wish I did by the way but it's hard for me to imagine doing this when I was 21 years old like

I'd have figured it out but god damn at the beginning I would not have been equipped for that it requires patience perseverance dealing, taking things in stride that happen outside of whatever the work it is you do along with inside of the work you do and a lot of different variables. And like you have to grow as a person. You have to take those experiences you talked about.

So I have respect for the fact that you're doing it and you have way more of it. Like you've self-taught yourself to have way more of an understanding about what that takes one one quote that i really love that that that helps push me like whenever i feel like i i am falling off track is the life you live is what you teach so it's like the life you live is what you teach yeah you said that um i don't know exactly where i found that quote keep talking but i i wrote it down on my whiteboard and um yeah every time i look at it it's just a reminder like hey don't don't slip up and and and do something that's not that you wouldn't that you wouldn't advise to the people that support you don't don't don't don't

do something that that you're like it's okay to have fun and stuff like that it's okay to enjoy yourself but live the life that you want to teach like be it's another way i i like how that goes it's another way of saying like find something to be an example of right or for other people how you do it and i think when when you go to find whatever that thing is, it has to be something that you're passionate about. And the really lucky thing that you have, and I have it too, is we're doing things that I guess are hard. There's a lot of competition for it.

You're trying to get people's attention with entertainment in a way. So it's difficult. But we're doing something we're passionate about you you love music you love what you do i love making music i love podcasts by the way i love podcasts i would i'd want to i'd want to start a podcast but not yet yeah let's let's get you a music career first and then you'll be able to start whatever podcast you want if you're good at it but yeah it's like you we find that thing so many people i don't have a percentage but it's a high percentage so many people don't end up having that you know and it doesn't doesn't make them a loser at all sometimes i get something it can be someone very very

successful but they hate what they do you know look at what i was doing in my first career i was good at it i never had a chance to get to like being successful and rich but i could have stayed with that and i i definitely could have done that but it didn't get me out of bed right it wasn't exciting for me you know so you at least have that and it can be torturous while you're building towards it and And especially as, I mean, you know how the market is. The market's like, give me a lot, then we'll talk. It's just what it is. That's tough. But if you're about it, if you're really about it,

it gives you a lot more ability to attack each day. 100%. Would you ever, what's your stance on everything happens for a reason and in the time that it's meant to it's a great question man so I'm a believer in that quote what I'm not a believer in is people who hide behind that quote and I'll explain what I mean there when people say something and I'll add to it, like when people say something like, I don't have any regrets because everything made me what I'm supposed to be today. A lot of people who say that are using that as a deflection for future mistakes that they're going to make by

not changing anything. That's bad. But when you can have healthy regrets about some things, but also be like, well, even though that went wrong, this taught me a lot. Or even this good thing happened along the other route I took. And now I know, don't do that again or don't go that way. But I have that in my head, which I can definitely relate to that. I think that's okay. But you got to be, it's one of those fine lines. You got to be very careful. I mean, what are your thoughts on it?

Exactly what you just said. I'm definitely on the same page with that. I experienced a lot of coincidences in life that seemed too magical to even be a coincidence or even be like a, or even be like a, yeah, I a yeah I don't even call it coincidences and coincidences anymore I personally just like when something happened I was like oh that was meant to happen and um because it happens so often and it and it seems so surreal so often it's like I've kind of just accepted like that it's kind of sometimes it just feels like our paths are written for us

and we just follow through with it. I don't necessarily believe that, but it feels like that sometimes. But I was actually curious to know, I was asking that because I was wondering if you going through the process as a banker prior to starting this podcast do you feel like that has equipped you with certain skills or certain perspectives that improve or contribute to what you're doing today one million percent percent. And it's not even, there is no gray area. It is the most black and white. Absolutely. And that's why I don't, I mean, I also spent a lot of time around a lot of different people, whether it was people I met

along the way, which is a huge part of it and the skills that took. Also the people I worked with and the relationships I have there, everything that happened that happened you know going to a new place living up in north jersey spending all my time in new york city i wouldn't trade that for the world it was great i do think i stayed too long i think i i knew in the back of my head i i knew when it was when it was time to to book it and i didn't because hesitation would you say or oh yeah i think a lot of it had to do with i really loved my team i love the guy i work for he's hilarious like you know the the kind of guy who's like a second dad who you who you fight with all the time and you're also like joking with all like a very good relationship and that so up and down you know what i mean and uh i i didn't i wanted i'm

like it'll work out because that's good that's good and then i just started i got to the point where you know he was offering me the deal you get there and it's like all right time to really bring in the fold and i was like holy shit i mean if i took it i could leave whenever i want technically but i would never do that like if I took that from him if I took that offer I'm a loyal guy I'm going to commit myself for five years and I was like fuck man

do I want to be crying in my Tesla five years from now and blaming everyone else when the real blame lies on me no I don't want to do that and so that's why I didn't but yeah it definitely it opened up my world. A lot of it through my own,

just kind of throw myself into situations that I couldn't have planned, which is great. And the people I met along the way, and to your point, the skills you have to form to be able to do what I did. I mean, a lot of my job was going out and knowing people, going out and knowing everyone. Didn't matter what they did, just cross culture, learning about what they did and how they did it, who they talked to, why they talked to them,

how the world works. You know, I had access through my boss to very, very powerful people too, which is interesting. You see a lot of good and a lot of bad with that and depending on the case and you learn a lot about how people prioritize things in life for better or worse and that's you know especially when it comes to like money yeah god damn is that an amazing education money is a very very very powerful tool in our society if used correctly yeah yeah it's you're right it's a people change no matter what with it but there are a lot of people i want to focus on the good of it too there are a lot of people who can change for the better i saw a ton of that which was very reassuring did i also see the other side absolutely and it's not you know it's not

always like someone becomes a bad person not like that at all i i didn't i honestly didn't know a lot of bad people in my career not many at all but a lot of people it invents like we were saying the more money more problems it invents a lot of things that suddenly they feel like this is an issue or that's an issue it's it's really not but that's just the unfortunate taboo with money but before i forget by the way you were just talking about the coincidences yeah keep the mic close to you but turn around and read that quote right there on the screen when seemingly random pieces fit together well one sense and intention behind it all sometimes something something wants this to happen yeah i got you reading like side eyes sorry rick rubin

goat i i haven't seen enough rick rubin but i just know he's a goat he's he's a major goat like he's one of the greatest ever i love i love seeing him to speak and speak with other artists he has so many great thoughts obviously he's had he's without question one of the three greatest producers of all time he's probably the best i mean dr dre's got a huge argument there's there's a few others who have a great argument but he's he's at the top of the game and the way you were just looks like a guru now oh yeah yeah i mean if people haven't i'll put his picture in the corner of the screen so people can see him but he's like you know he's a guy who's i guess 65 or whatever with looks like phil robertson from duck hunters

and yet he'll go lock himself in shangri-la shangri i forget how they say it but it's one of his famous studios that's in his backyard in california that's in an old abandoned bus and like he'll lock himself in there with kanye west and god knows what they talk about for like 12 hours but that's you know i love guys like that and the way he described that i'm such a believer in how you're putting it it's like you can't sit there and be at effect and wait for things to happen to you and be like well i'm here so things will happen you have to just keep going and keep rolling just like you're doing but when you do that those coincide i don't know coincidences coincide whatever the good word whatever we'll make them up around here they start to fall into

place yeah and i swear to god he put that out in a tweet maybe like three months ago four months ago and i saw it i was so moved by it and then i started to even notice that over the next few weeks i was like god damn it's like even when you're making a tiktok and you have everything put together and you're trying to find that song and then you find a sound sounds good and then you drop it down in on adobe premiere into the into the beat and and you're like holy like the it's like the universe wants this to happen you put yourself in a position now it's there yeah you know it's it's a very very cool thing sometimes it feels like that with um with people too but like the the way that i that i viewed things with people um i mean despite meeting

somebody and and that's a coincidence that i met them um sometimes it feels like life well the way that i see it is like life moves in circles sometimes so like when it comes to like relationships with people like you meet somebody sometimes and it's a very like interesting timing that you met that person yes and you might not communicate with that person regularly, and it's a very interesting timing that you met that person. And you might not communicate with that person regularly, but then there's a certain point. It could be months later. It could be years later. And you encounter that person again. And it still might not be anything, but there's a certain point in that circle where the reason why you met that person in the first place starts to actually reveal itself and then that's when I start to see like the

circle actually starts to close and I feel like it's very interesting I've encountered that a lot over the last over the last few years like certain people that I meet tends to like I don't know exactly why I met them I knew I was supposed to meet them and sometimes it's like somebody that I reached out to Like over the last I want to say probably like five weeks ago two three people that I've reached out to in 2019 all Got back to me for the first time in complete different ways in

That same week. It was really weird But three people I reached out to one of was uh this instagram page called bad vibes forever official um really really really really cool dude that runs that account named noah um shout out noah but um uh it was noah a producer named john cunningham very very talented producer he did most of x's uh last three like most of x's like final albums x major inspiration that i was gonna say that's a i didn't know that but that's a good uh that's a very very good lineup for you and your style yeah but i i i i need to lock in with john cunningham um is like as i've reached out to him since 2019 to work. Now he got back to you.

And then, yeah. And the funny thing is that I got in touch with these people not even through the DM that I sent them. I had somebody else that I knew since 2018, somebody named Ryan Bisco. He's a songwriter and producer artist. I've known him through my previous manager who she was working with Ryan to have Ryan write some records for this girl that she currently still manages. But I met Ryan through her initially and ryan just hit me up the

other day um not the other day but a couple weeks ago and he was like hey do you know this person and i was like uh yeah i go to my dms i screenshot like yeah i tried to reach out to this person like since 2019 and then boom i get a follow from this person and then i get a dm back for this and all that kind of ties together yeah and then um noah specifically like that same day i had a three-hour conversation on facetime with him like right off the jump and it was just like boom like that that's just like like the circle started when i when i when i sent the dm and now the circle is like 25 complete but like now we have yet to meet and do some sort of work together and 75 100 circles closed and another circle might start with that same person but like just a interesting perspective this is where i like look at things with certain people

that i meet circles are you a huge believer in destiny then? I don't use the word destiny a lot, but technically I guess I am a believer in destiny. I'll amend it because this is the type of destiny I'm a believer in. Created destiny. Created by self. Yeah. There are certain things. I think sometimes with people and relationships, there can just be some destiny, like someone you lose touch with, and then they come back into your life, or you bump into someone you haven't seen in a long time, created destiny is a real thing and that is when people make sure that similar to what i was saying

a couple minutes ago it's when people take the actions repeatedly they're going to put themselves in the position to have that destiny come upon them so like with that kind of thing you know this is and it's very clearly a trait with you you're always moving reaching out to people making connections trying to figure out you know what people add value here or there how you can add value for them and then building relationships and that's a like you were asking me about my last job that's i had that trait before that job i think i'm good at that but i really honed it in that job and you've honed it doing your work over all these years and from a younger age than I would have ever even thought about that.

Before I even acknowledged it, technically. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. It's very, very, very... It's just crazy to look back at it every time. Now, are you also... Because you had said you want to be able to focus on get great at one thing. And obviously, that's music. But you are still making some time looking into this other shit.

So are you like a huge Bitcoin guy? Or when you say crypto, what do you mean? Yeah, crypto is a distraction, but also a blessing for me. It distracts me from my music and my content but it also is setting me up for financially for the future as i learn more and invest more so it's like at the end of the day it's like i'm i'm very thankful for it because like you can i feel like it's it's bad to like if you want to focus on one thing it's good to focus on one thing and it's very helpful too but when you're forcing it and not allowing yourself to do what whatever you're supposed to be like whatever other you want to do yeah yeah then

that's not healthy like that's kind of like it's like it's being tunnel vision in a way um and i feel like once your tunnel vision like it kind of like there's a there's a balance that you need to have between like i feel um with honing down on on honing down on what you need to work on and develop and developing discipline for it, whatever that thing is. And then having the balance between smiling like Elon Musk, enjoying your time. And those also tie together as well. So you enjoy learning about crypto and doing things. Yeah, definitely. Big time. How'd you get into it?

So it started with that break from Musical.ly in 2017. I just wanted to start making a lot of money. I mean, who doesn't want to make money? Yeah, we were all there. Yeah, I got into Amazon FBA. You got into what? Amazon F and the what amazon fba it's like uh it's like you get to sell products on amazon technically oh that's the name of that program yeah okay so amazon fba um i wanted to learn a little bit about affiliate affiliate marketing um i opened like three drop shipping businesses a cosmetic store um a clothing store a watch store

and yeah i created all of these um just trying to build income for myself and then some of those people that i was learning from youtube like on how to do this they were into crypto as well and then that introduced me to crypto and were they using crypto to like do some of their payments or i accepted his payment as well or i think it it just came up on my like recommended at that point like because i was looking at already yeah i was looking at so many just like financial related videos um crypto came about and then i bought my first bitcoin with musically money um you bought a full bitcoin yeah at 17 you still have that nah god damn it dude that that i'm so glad i learned from that though um it's like um yeah but i bought uh my first bitcoin it was 11 000 at uh she bought that in like september october 2017 yeah like october 2017 um and that's just like i used to

live stream all the time on musically like every single day and i was able to make a pretty decent amount of money for myself at the age of 16 17 what now did you get into other cryptocurrencies as well right away or were you kind of pure bitcoin at the time uh it was just like coin there weren't a lot of apps yet i feel like in a lot of there weren't enough exchanges i mean they were but like trustworthy exchanges yes so i got on um coinbase and then bought my first bitcoin there um definitely was trying to get my parents really into it as well um were you successful encouraged i it was going well eleven thousand eleven thousand up to twenty thousand000. And I was like, yeah,

we going up. And then I was like, Bitcoin to 40,000. Yeah. Yeah. Right down the ski slope there. Yeah. And, um, kind of just, uh, after I went back to, after I went back to what my initial investment was um i i think i i ended up losing money essentially overall like i i we all did yeah i panicked yeah i panicked so i was like you know what this is the end of crypto is just gonna go down from here um so yeah i sold and then spent that money on who knows what on liabilities as opposed to assets bad bad move um but yeah i lost that money and then i got into forex uh about two years later so actually was it two years later you were doing or was it you were doing currency exchange right yeah so i about a it was either a year i don't know i don't remember if it was 2018 or 2019 that I got into Forex

but a lot of people like there's a lot of Forex groups that like that like There's um that they were like recruit people in they get residual income Weekly, but also make money from the trades. It's a borderline pyramid scheme a borderline pyramid scheme not exactly a pyramid yeah yeah um yeah i mean uh i got into forex uh and forex taught me how to just read support and resistance levels which definitely apply to crypto but crypto is a lot more volatile but it's definitely helped me have a better understanding of how the market works and then you came back to crypto and i came back to crypto in 2021 but i was using the same platform that you use for forex um called metatrader metatrader 4 um it allows you to trade options which is is super risky. I lost a lot of money because... Yeah, that shit's... I tell people not to do that.

Like, there's a... You can use a demo account for MetaTrader 4. So I was making a lot of money with my demo account. So I was like, you know what? If I'm doing all these good demo trades, let me just do the real trade because it's the same market. And yeah, I was just losing thousands of dollars at a time. And I was like, that's that's that but i definitely took all that all those losses and was able to like learn a lot more

and um i got back into the market this year actually when it comes to crypto in 2021 what are you in i'm in cardano something called v chain or there's veto and v chain v chain thor and v chain um harmony one uh my biggest holding is cardano currently though i don't hold any bitcoin now any ethereum personally now cardano i know cardano is a more i don't like calling anything in the space legit i will call bitcoin legit but nothing's guaranteed like bitcoin i think is a beautiful beautiful invention it's it's pretty incredible it's nothing's perfect but it's one of the closer things towards perfect that i've ever seen created in money when you look at the context of monetary history and where human beings were on the innovation cycle and size of economies

and ability cycle but nothing's guaranteed in there that said like my attitude is massive skepticism towards anything else now i do have i would, a solid level of knowledge on Ethereum. I would never call myself an expert, nor would I own Bitcoin either. But Ethereum, to me, has a user adoption. The whole DeFi concept and how that can take away legacy financial systems power on monetary access is huge that said they still have to move to ethereum 2.0 because for people that aren't in there and don't understand every time you transact on ethereum especially if you're in like nfts you can see it there gas fees the gas fees are insane they're insane and they just mentioned a couple of nfts and i was like what are these gas fees you can

pay triple the price and that's a little ridiculous but sometimes it could be something like that so that's not sustainable the idea to me is very very good and like i look at that idea from the lens of i view a world where if this all goes right and the powers that be don't stop this from happening in some way we have a world that is based off of Bitcoin as the store of value. But Bitcoin is not the currency. I never see that happening. I think that – I still think that Bitcoiners that are like, it's going to be the currency. I think – I don't think they have a good argument.

I think that Bitcoin is gold on steroids and HGH and everything else. It's way better. It's real gold. Right. We'll have a currency below it which is why like i gotta look into cardano more again my idea is to be a little more skeptical but i look at that as interesting because even though my current bet without a ton of confidence is that a quote-unquote currency that will eventually be built off of bitcoin as a value would come on the ethereum blockchain even though that's the bet it's the farthest thing from like more than

just leader in the clubhouse in the first quarter of the race here so like something like cardano which i know less about i've heard a lot of people talk about hey i don't know if it's like it's gonna be its total own separate entity if that's how they view it i don't know if it can have something on it that's built towards bitcoin but i'll listen to something if we're talking about making some type of currency that's below that world in the bitcoin universe in the world where crypto wins which i think can happen it's just a matter again like will it so like what what drew you towards Cardano in particularly? Cardano, it was partially Charles Hoskinson who was behind it.

He's a mathematical genius. And he also, if I'm not mistaken, was a part of Ethereum's development. And also just like seeing that out of all the altcoins, I feel like it's definitely, I mean, not out of all of the altcoins because they all have kind of different purposes. But I just saw a lot of potential in it, honestly. And I can't necessarily pinpoint what it was, but I still have a lot of faith in Cardano. I still have a lot of faith in cardano i still have a lot of faith in cardano do you think that they're going to be able to run like a market like nfts has given ethereum despite the gas fees a ton of legitimacy because that's how a lot of it's executed do you see something like that even just nfts themselves i don't know anything about this with cardano if

it's already happening a little bit i haven't heard anything but it could be do you see something like that being able to operate on that system and therefore giving it more of a user base meaning more people adopt it because it's out of necessity and then see that it's a good use case for it and then start to actually look at it as something legit definitely and there's a there's a lot of talk about like cardano kind of being the solution to to issues with Ethereum. And Ethereum has been working on their Ethereum 2.0, or Cardano to kind of be the frontrunner of their lane. And I feel like Cardano is winning the race in a sense. Yeah, I got to look at it more. Cardano is dope.

Definitely. I've had a few different people who I really trust as far as they're not they're not chasing waterfalls or anything they're not even big crypto people they're like more tech science people and they're like no one's been like yo this is the thing but they're all like we need to look at this this is this is interesting they do think it's going to crash because it's run far too far and that's just how things work but again like bitcoin crashes over time too like any pathway to adoption is going to have bumps it's got big bumps it's just how it works but i think that we're at such a weird point in the world like i'm a huge history buff and you talk about

coincidences not a coincidence that bitcoin's created three weeks after the entire financial system fails and starts trading two months before the bottom of the market in 2009 that's not a coincidence the timing and how everything lined up and the lack of i mean i don't know how much you know about that but that was my world finance so i was very aware of how the whole financial crisis went down and what happened and like that was such a seminal moment in world history even way more than we give it credit for at this time and so knowing that across all the other factors and then adding in bitcoin and that whole movement towards quote-unquote

crypto that was born out of that it's like whoa okay if everything else is affecting all these things that i know so much like including the wealth gap and major geopolitical issues around the world that we've seen in the 12, 13, 14 years since, well, what's – why are we going to make an argument that one of the solutions in a movement of people creating it isn't going to be something that a lot of people in a quote-unquote internet world can find a way to get behind again you have to worry about powers that be not wanting this to happen because if a government can't control money what do they control nothing you know it's it's a very weird thing so i don't really know how to view it but i'm gonna stay skeptical on like the the individual names whereas the space itself led by bitcoin i'm very very very bullish on so i i think more people like i think more people in the gen z and millennial generations have to start looking at this as a concept, period, right? Rather than the people who are in there,

which still aren't enough, looking at it just purely in investment principles, which is very easy to do. Most people I know, that's kind of how they look at it. We have to get more philosophical about it, in my opinion, because that's how- Future of finance. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

It's a fucked up world in finance. Let me tell you. You mentioned the powers to be. Is that what you said? Yeah, powers that be. What is your perception on powers beyond the U.S. government? If you have a perception, where do you stand on powers beyond the U.S. government? Getting our tinfoil hats out here? Yeah.

Yeah, okay. I try to look at everything with as much reality injected to the situation that I can. So, like, when it comes to conspiracies, right? Let's just go all the way to the top. Oh, man. You're walking into the- I had to put my dad in here. You're walking into the wolves den right here with this one.

But when it comes to those things, the word conspiracy, and I'm going to get, I'm not reading off Merriam-Webster's, but the general idea of it is that it involves any group of people who are in the know on something that other people aren't and they use that thing to their advantage to do something quote-unquote conspire for their own interests or even straight up against the interests of people not in that group when you are looking at any group of people a group of two people who run a small business somewhere in the most micro sense right there's some level of conspiracy if like let's say i run a i run a candy store right yeah and i know that i'm selling this chocolate bar for a dollar 35 this week instead of a dollar 25 because people want it and it's not really worth that but the demand's there so i'm just going to do it and not tell anyone and they're just going to pay it that's a level of conspiracy right so once you really dumb down the word it goes to everything so when you get to powerful big bodies governments organizations corporations

whatever around the world yes there's a level of conspiracy do i think that like do i think that people are raping kids in in the bottom of pizza parlors like the whole right-wing conspiracy was a few years ago? No. That shit's crazy. That shit doesn't happen. I don't want to say. I don't know where shit happens. But that shit that they were pointing out, that the Federal Reserve, for example, knows a lot of things about how money is supplied and what their effects are on the economy that maybe some people can talk about in public, but they're not in the meetings recording it to actually hear it from their mouths while they market it then to the public afterwards.

Absolutely. It's a conspiracy there. So you talk about specifically like outside the U.S. government. Of course there is. Powers beyond. there so you talk about specifically like outside the u.s government of course like powers beyond powers that kind of like almost control how the government is operating and commanding who do you think that is let's get your thoughts on this first uh i want to say hey i don't want to you know what i'm going to talk about it so um i think uh one of the the situations that our world is currently going through is strongly driven more so than the government. I feel like it's more so driven by pharmaceutical companies and when it comes to vaccine mandates, etc.

And I'm not considering myself an anti-vaccine person or a pro-vaccine person. I'm just definitely make the decision of your own type of person, what's best for you, and also just be considerate of others. But I also feel like rather than the entire government as a whole being the one to push to push this amongst people there's organ there's corporations organizations um in the far pharmaceutical world which is very very very very big yeah um and if I'm not mistaken I believe I might be wrong on this um no I think I am wrong on this but overall pharmacy I feel like farmers

I feel like pharmaceutical companies just have a lot of have their hand in a lot of things such as the government and media and um essentially it is a very uh it's just something that people don't pay attention to and people should pay attention to more i agree i think you know i feel like nobody should should be listening to one um yeah i mean yeah one thing and people don't realize that they're listening to the narrative of of set by someone that they they're not seeing or probably doesn't know exist so there was a podcast episode that came out this past week it came out at a perfect time because it was on Wednesday while I was doing Adobe Photoshop edits.

That's when I can listen to podcasts. And it was on Rogan, of course. He gets the best ones. And it was Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay Gupta. Wow. Did you see this? I haven't heard his name in years, bro.

Are you thinking of the right person? He's the guy on CNN. He's the doctor on CNN. He's the doctor on CNN. I remember him. So you're not watching CNN because he's on there every day. I grew up watching CNN at my grandparents' house because my grandfather is just news always on. News always on.

But I haven't heard Sanjay Gupta since then. Listen to that. Definitely. For sure. I want to listen to it again is he still on cnn yeah okay i was stunned um i i saw that come across i'm like i'm seeing that wrong joe rogan's having on the medical guy from cnn because like you know he's talked about suing them recently because some of the shit they said about him on tv that was just wrong and i gotta tell you i i respected the fuck out of gupta gupta i don't

know if i'm saying it right for doing it i think he made some good cases i think rogan made some good cases too i mean i'm i i didn't have hesitation with the vaccine i wasn't worried about it my whole thing is a lot of what you're referring to which is the control and the division they're trying to sew with people with a corporation in the middle of it to make money absolutely that stuff happens and i think that that has created more mistrust in the situation so to see a guy from cnn who he knew what he was walking into he knew that rogan had legitimate beef with things that his network he's not doing it but his network's doing it that had been showing up there and he knew he was going to get that and he did and i respected the

out of that but i felt like even though he made some arguments that i agreed with and then somewhere it's like rogan just mollywhopped him just beat him i think having the conversation out in the open like that with someone who is at least at some level a high insider yeah on a very open traditionally open platform like joe rogan's podcast was fucking awesome and i hope of course i saw people politicizing the fuck out of it online afterwards either like calling sanjay goop to hitler or calling him the second coming of jesus christ and it's depending on what you think and i i didn't take any of that i was more so like this is how we need to talk about this stuff because this takes that quote-unquote

high-level conspiracy of this stuff and at least brings some of the conversation there so that people can feel like they have a little bit more information. You talk about these companies, though, and what they do. Of course. It's just like a bank, dude. To me, the one place, I don't know if I'll disagree with you, but you didn't say this part, so feel free to disagree. The one place where I'll definitely add to it is that you can't just say pharmaceuticals.

It's absolutely banks. It's absolutely tech companies. It's all these other places that still you know they're reporting to daddy right they're reporting to the government and the government gets to decide who their favorite kids are that make money and so like you know i i see with this vaccine we're gonna have it's something we may have to take every year could i see them having the ability to make one we just have to take once sure i don't know maybe they have maybe they haven't but that wouldn't be advantageous monetarily for them and so if they if they go out there and and they make us do that every year you know if they get

charged with it in court eventually i'm not going to write the judges a leniency letter at sentencing put it that way but the rest of it is like i don't fucking care you know but there is a concern and it's not just at that level it's on a broader scale to me of powerful bodies around the world interacting with each other in ways that continue to sow dissent among the rest of us and so like have you looked at like the wealth gap data at all no but i i do remember you mentioning wealth gap not so long ago i've talked i've talked about it it's it's one of my favorite topics but it's a real thing it's been happening since the 1980s the chart increasing yeah yeah so the the global recession in 2008 just split it like a fucking v and so I do think that the quote-unquote powerful parties the Republicans

and the Democrats I mean it's it's a two-party system even around the world if they're not called that it's mostly two parties they exist especially in the most powerful countries outside of one party systems that exist for the same reason they exist to convince everyone that they don't like each other on certain lines and they go pick out things that have some truth to them they pick out things like some racism and some things where there's not equality and stuff and instead of recognizing the source of the issues and trying to fix those they try to convince people that it's far worse than it's ever been because that's what sells panic. With the power of media.

Yes. And I think overall it's divide and conquer at its finest, but it's finding different ways to divide people. And essentially that's another thing that I just want to promote, unity. Yes. Unity and positivity. There's no reason why we can't all live in harmony and um i feel like there's just some people um in power who who do call a lot of the shots that um

in my opinion might not have like it really depends on how you look at it like some people might not really have the just the best intention for um for humanity as a whole yes and then some of those people might i think like i look at it sometimes like some of those people may have just convinced themselves to a certain extent that what they're doing is better for the future of humanity in a sense or like just of better for the for the way that things better for the way things should be run but essentially i feel like there's a mix between some people who feel like they're doing the right thing and And some people who are just finding ways to maintain power and have more power. It's a very mature way of looking at it.

The way that I like to look at people as a whole, like I don't see anyone as bad. Like when I look at people, I see everyone for the innocent child that they were born as to be and and then i look i look at that and then i tell myself like if someone is a really bad person life really treated them wrong at some point like you can't just be born and just be like a i'm evil right type of person like life had to have done something to you and i feel like if you can really just like have a uh like there's only some people unless somebody feels like the world is against them like there's only some like everyone everyone just had has has been through through something and um essentially like i i guess i have a soft spot for everybody. And it's this dangerous thing

because I've been stepped on in my life due to that. But essentially, everyone has that. I think that core innocence that comes with birth, it remains in everyone. And there's only certain environments where that comes out unless you're just that person but like once you've gotten yourself to the we'll call it the dark side um yeah it's very difficult to really like pull that out um but i mean yeah that's uh it's just the way it is you know what i'm finding in connecting with people in this job and talking with different people on

the internet who reach out and i reach out to them i'm finding that there are a lot more really i shouldn't say a lot you know what fuck it I'll say a lot more the Gen Z generation does have part of it that is a worse version of my generation the millennials who has a lot of problems I shit on my generation all the time for some of the things we do or don't do but there are a lot of very very deep nuanced thinkers in the gen z generation who have an understanding of being able to kind of pull up and look at things from the core level just like you described it and that's such a mature way of looking at it because yeah people they all start as a kid just like you and you don't choose where you're born to and you know there has to be like the biggest problem psychologically with republicans and democrats is that like you look at republicans they're overly pragmatic about

fucking everything right and i'm generalizing but in general like that's what it is you look at democrats they're overly emotional about fucking everything you have to have a balance of those two things and so you should be able to say and i'm paraphrasing the overall point of what you just said you should be able to say there's a level of good and bad in everything the ratios can just be a little different and where i would say sometimes it can get lost is like yeah i do think when people are far enough on the dark side they can lose totally who they are does that mean it's completely incapable of being pulled out again in a moment of trying humanity no but like are there people who just generally do a lot of bad yeah there are it just it is what it is and i would

hope you can reach people but in a way less serious but similar psychological parallel way one of the things i did experience in a lot in my career and continue to experience today is like when you see someone who's great at something and they have the ability to sit down and do it you've seen it before but you want it more for them than they want it for themselves you can sit here and hype them up as much as you want they might even be someone who has affirmation as a love language but then you know they leave the room they go off on their own again and they don't want it right so it's a similar thing way more serious when you're talking about people who are doing evil you might be i'm curious

about those people like if i just sat down with them not on camera just just talk with them in a closed room exactly right like one-on-one would i get through so that when they left the room they wouldn't be like that some people you don't you may be able to get through a little bit in the room but then they walk back out and they go this this is me right right and it's it's a weird thing because you don't want to discard people but when you're looking at people in power there comes a point where there are enough actions over a long period of time that you can be like hey this person is not too great and yeah i think we have a huge opportunity right now and it can go the wrong way and the cynic in me says it's going to go the wrong way but we're in a biden presidency and we

were just in a trump presidency and i don't like either of these guys i would have said i actually did say it like right when afghanistan was going down i was like you know the biden administration hasn't been as bad as i thought it was going to be and then ever since then just like off a cliff but these and i knew like it's horrible that he's like this scapegoated guy who's not doing anything but i'm like the administration hadn't been at the bar was so low it wasn't a train wreck but like we've had these two opposite people in office who are highly controversial for different reasons and it's like there's a lot of division coming from it and that's what i'm worried about

but i kind of also wonder if enough people are now having the opportunity to wake up and be like yo this all ain't it because like for example i know a lot of people who perfectly understandably so were firmly like hardcore anti-trumpers who voted for biden they weren't excited about but they voted for him and now they don't like trump at all like that's not the issue but they're they're very hardcore like anti-bideners now and i'm like okay let's let's keep that energy now let's find out where we're at you know let's find out where there's a third lane here and how many people are in it and if we can be loud about it the question i have is extremism tends to get attention is moderation going to get attention i'm betting that maybe it can, but I'm not confident in that bet. I wish I was.

It's heavy. Sorry. No, no, no. I feel you. I just want people to look within themselves more. And like you said, the word wake up yeah i feel like a lot of people are are being and this is not my own term so nobody take this as an insult but sheep um and it's like the puppet masters are are are are winning are winning the are winning the battle, essentially.

I think that they found a great way to divide people with a vaccine. Big time. And I think it's very much, I do think it's very intentional. I look at the media and headlines and narratives and just seeing the way that things can be easily twisted for example like nikki minaj never necessarily declare declared being an anti-vax vaccine person but i mean even the term anti-vaxxer like created a part of a narrative like um and then like her being declared one by all media outlets after just saying that she's uncomfortable making that decision and putting something into her bloodstream that she is not familiar with and something that hasn't been around when she's lived 20-something or 30-something years in her life without having to do that.

I feel like there's nothing wrong with that and then to to paint the picture in the media and and kind of put a bad name over that person because of that personal decision um definitely is is creating a certain narrative and it pushes people more to question it yeah which is questioning is amazing um but i mean it's just like it's essentially just the division and like fueling the division is what is very frustrating to me I love the fact that people have the opportunity to just

converse though conversation I feel like is going to be the solution to most things people not getting too emotional in that conversation and letting it just be one sided like people actually taking the time to listen to one another but being able to do all of that all starts with knowledge of self and being able to understand yourself more you're going to be able to be more patient with other people you're going to be able to be more understanding of other people's

perspective and you're going to be more more patient with people essentially we have an enormous crisis of self-awareness in this country right now with with specifically with belief systems people preach one thing and they don't realize that other actions point to the direct opposite and it exists in every direction i could point out examples every single day and i i've been caught in those two streams i've been left in my life i've been right in those two streams. I've been left in my life. I've been right in my life. I know what that's like. I know, and I'm not, I have plenty of people who are listening

who are one way or the other. So like, I'm not calling out everyone. I think sometimes if you go hard enough and get deep enough into it, you can start to make yourself in those situations every time that you get into that actual situation, to make yourself in those situations every time that you get into that actual situation you make yourself believe things and you start to not you talk about not questioning

you don't question shit people start a movement politically getting behind one idea that's very passionate to them and then suddenly they'll believe a hundred others and not think about why they believe it just because their guy who who has their one thing in his back pocket of that's something i agree with as a political person well that's my god now and it's like this is not how it should be and that that's that's a bad effect to trump in the sense that and and you could say it with obama too i just think trump was a way bigger deal with it he he was the guy he was the attention the rock the quote-unquote rock star you know he's hilarious like as an entertainer which doesn't help as far as like people love that i mean i love that about him i continue i'll tell you i'd watch that guy read the fucking phone book it's hysterical right but you know he made that personal brand the whole thing and then people get they get it's a human you get attached to it

whereas if it's politician x and politician y and here are the ideas and here's how we're going to try to execute much healthier way of looking at things i understand it's going to be very hard to live in that world though you know it's that's not it's not an easy thing what you were saying on lack of self-awareness i always wonder to myself if it's a flaw in our in our system that starts with like the educational system um or it's completely intentional like from the creators of a system that we live in. But then again, it's like everything is a little different depending on where you are, where you're from, what school you go to. Like it does double down to that.

But in general, like in terms of like curriculums in general for the United States as a whole, is it intentionally set up this way for people to come to a point where they are completely not self-aware and trying to just like follow something outside of them or like look to everything outside of themselves selves or if it's just a flaw that will be fixed over time with people um just i think i am i think i understand what you're saying my answer to your question is yes i think it also as in a flaw or intentional it's intentional yeah i'm sorry that just to be clear it's intentional. Yeah, I'm sorry. Just to be clear. It's intentional. Because I also think it sells. Like I said, division sells. Happiness, the want for happiness sells. Happiness in practice doesn't. percentages but there is some responsibility on me on you on everyone as an individual to understand certain things about themselves and we're not good at that as a society i'm not calling

out any one person at all here i'm calling out all of them including very clearly myself at many points in my life and perhaps even now like there's probably some things that i should get more in touch with i i have to identify them i I don't know what they are, but it's this world where we have a cyclone of information all around us at all times, and we get lost sometimes in just hearing things passively over and over and over again and then starting to assume that as truth. I think we should question things.

I also don't think, though, that we should be, you know, I don't think we should be Alex Jones. I don't think we should go off the rails and you know think that every you know the obamas are abducting kids and raping them in their basement like that's not happening you know it's not not that he said that but you get my point like ridiculousness um that's not where you should be but there should be that healthy discussion that you talk about and i i hope to be one of many people who creates that kind of thing but you have to have a lot you know

like right now i think russell brand is a great one i think rogan's a great one i think some of the guys in rogan's tree like lex friedman is phenomenal lex friedman uh he's been interviewed by rogan yes i'll show you his stuff he's got i really like jordan peterson jordan peterson's great and he gets a bad rap he gets he gets the wrong rap in my opinion but why do you like jordan i he i feel like he speaks directly to me every time i'm listening to something it's just like it's completely understood like the way that he explains things is just like, is great and straight to the point. And it's like, I don't know.

I've listened to a lot of Jordan Peterson. So when he says, Julian, you have to be a damn monster. You have to be a monster. You have to be tough. You have to know you could kill, you can't be killed that's that's how society was made you know so he's speaking to you like that he's dope he's dope he's got a funny voice i like he's he's a he's a he's a great dude i've listened to a lot of him and i think um yeah everything he says is it it resonates it's not like anything that just flies over my head, I feel like.

He's a phenomenal speaker overall. Yeah, he is absolutely in that game. I feel like what he talks about, essentially, what he talks about is very good to equip you to become going from a boy to a man like like he can he can speak to you and and make you adopt the qualities of like a of like what a how a proper man should carry themselves through society based on just the responsibilities that you should be taking and like the discipline like when i listen to him it's just like boom i don't even know how to put it but essentially he's just he definitely um definitely

just he speaks right to me big time i i would love to dig into that with you but i i just looked at the clock i think i think your dad's gonna fucking kill me i know what time is it it's 2 30 holy shit all right so yeah let's let's let's get out of here if for some reason he says we can stay we'll be back right after the bump right now but i assume we're done but yo dude i gotta have you back no i love to part two this was great i like how you think i think we only really scratched the surface today. We didn't have a ton of time. You ever done a digital podcast? Like an e-podcast?

No, no. Never. Are you familiar? Oh, for real? Never. You know what? I don't blame you for that. No.

Energy is completely different on a face-to-face level. I don't even have the app. Like, I download Zoom when someone schedules a Zoom meeting. Right. Yeah, I'm like, don't do it. But yeah, this was awesome, dude. We'll have you back you back i gotta get you out of here before your parents come and kill me yes but so thank you for doing it unity and positivity my friends come together question things have conversations and thank you julian thank you julian man pleasure i appreciate it

do it again everyone else you know what it is. Blessings. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace.