No Jumper - The Andrew Callaghan Interview: Channel 5, Crip Mac, Gangs, Documenting America & More

Episode Date: August 3, 2022

Andrew Callaghan chops it up with Adam about his work ethic, Channel 5, Crip Mac, Chief Keef, Gary V, NFT, hitchhiking for 70 days, what comes with giving the wrong people a platform, and more. ----- 00:00 Intro 3:48 Adam used to be into medieval cosplay, listening to Korn 6:13 Your hobbies change when you start thinking you could have s*x or sm*ke tree 10:12 Andrew wanted to be the next Chief Keef 14:35 Adam doesn't want to answer who is the worst rapper is 15:17 Adam says drill music is bad for society 16:21 Andrew questions Adam about gang members coming on No Jumper 18:10 Andrew talks to Crip Mac sometimes and adds money to his books as well 19:06 The Crip Mac Channel 5 interview 22:13 Interviewing a gang member has a ripple effect, it validates something sad like they're doing something good 27:28 Hoff Twins documentary was made by Nic, wanna bring them to a Twin convention 30:14 Nic got p*nched by Crip Mac 31:07 Getting fan love in Hungary and Dubai off of the Crip Mac content 32:17 Andrew circles back and asks if Adam feels responsible for giving a platform to gang members, Adam says no 43:18 Hitchhiking for 70 days, documented everything, and made a book 48:18 Friendship with Vlad, Andrew not asking Vlad-type questions 50:26 DJ Small Eyez is a creepy interviewer 1:01:04 Adam breaks down the making 1M per month quote 1:04:35 Andrew is not ok with negative comments, ready to change his whole content if a fan doesn't like something 1:08:40 Feature film in the works, looking for a distributor 1:21:38 Inspired by Mr. Beast, he's just so focused and that good: "My arch nemesis" 1:23:28 Soft White Underbelly's Mark Leita paying his guests and giving a lot of money away 1:27:12 Andrew doesn't want to give ____ people a platform 1:32:36 Andrew says the Boarded Security Expo video is the worst ever made 1:43:46 Chet Hanx tried to launch an NFT, Andrew not knowing Gary V at Complex Con 1:47:03 Andrew got a full college scholarship based on his work around graffiti 1:53:36 Covering the protests in 2020 changed Andrew's perspective for the better ----- NO JUMPER PATREON http://www.patreon.com/nojumper CHECK OUT OUR NEW SPOTIFY PLAYLIST https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5te... FOLLOW US ON SNAPCHAT FOR THE LATEST NEWS & UPDATES https://www.snapchat.com/discover/No_... CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE STORE!!! nojumper.com SUBSCRIBE for new interviews (and more) weekly: http://bit.ly/nastymondayz  Follow us on SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4ENxb4B... iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/n... Follow us on Social Media: https://www.snapchat.com/discover/No_... http://www.twitter.com/nojumper http://www.instagram.com/nojumper https://www.facebook.com/NOJUMPEROFFI... http://www.reddit.com/r/nojumper JOIN THE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/Q3XPfBm Follow Adam22: https://www.tiktok.com/@adam22 http://www.twitter.com/adam22 http://www.instagram.com/adam22 adam22hoe on Snapchat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No Jumper, coolest podcast in the world. And today, we got one of the illest content creators in the game on the show, Andrew Callahan. Thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate it. How you doing, man? This is epic. Yeah. You guys have oat milk here too, so it's good.

We do. Yeah. See, I didn't even know that. Yeah. Although I do like oat milk. When I go get like an oat milk latte at Alfred's, you go there? No, what's that? It's like a really trendy coffee spot that they have in like a couple of different locations around L.A.

and I guess like the Jenners are all about it. Yeah, I go to Blue Bottle, you know. That one's good too. Yeah, it's a good chain. Just expressing your YouTube wealth through your caffeine choices. Yeah, it's the reveal. I mean, people out there don't even know that there are like $9 coffees, don't you think? They're better when they cost more.

Yeah, doesn't it kind of feel like that? Yeah, it's stronger, tastier. What do you think, Nick? Yeah, they're better. What kind of caffeine are you consuming at this point in your life? Cold brew. Three cold brews a day. Just one.

That's self-love. Absolutely. That's you letting the world know, like, I'm not just some regular-ass Starbucks drinker. Oh, shit. Which I am in this situation. Is that a grande? Yeah, it would appear to be. I actually grew up a few blocks away from the original Starbucks in Seattle.

I have ridden my bike by that Starbucks and had someone point out that is the original Starbucks. Yeah, it's a sight to see. It's like the thing in Seattle, huh? Yeah, one of the things. You got the space needle, Ferris wheel, and we got Starbucks. But do you think people kind of look at it as a bad place in a way because it sort of, it signaled the death of the local coffee shop to an extent, right? Absolutely, it's a symbol of a corporate takeover. Right.

Also, the line is horrendous, so if you want to get a cup of coffee, they also don't even have drip coffee there. They don't. They think they're better than us. It's Americano and London fog and whatnot. Usually somebody just trotting around with a bang energy. Yeah. That's like, let's get them on camera. It's like a weed trimmer thing.

Yeah. You can just see the green build up on their fingers. Absolutely. For your share. All right, let me ask you a question that I was thinking would be an interesting question throughout that. What do you think we could cover in this interview that maybe you haven't done in the past or that you think would be kind of unique? You're the one, you've done plenty interviews.

You know what is the well treaded upon ground, right? That's a good question. I guess like this is a lot of. rappers on the podcast right I used to rap in high school and middle school yeah so Sean Evans kind of yeah Nard war you that with that I've been Nard word quite a few times quite a few times because you're kind of new to the limelight so there's still stuff to Nard war you with certainly so yeah yeah interesting so you think that's probably the thing that you want to zero in on here is the whatever you want to ask

about man we're in it we're an open book for sure I like let me just tell you that the main thing that I get from Channel 5 that I love about it is I think it really teaches you to appreciate the nuance of how fucking weird your current existences. Like I was just pointing out that there's a time of my life where I was absolutely feeling like I was never going to go to an agenda or a ComplexCon ever again. Through watching your coverage of ComplexCon, it kind of made me feel like, okay, this is a better template for how to go about going to that sort of thing.

Yeah. Especially if you think about all the other interviewers that go to like rap events like that. They're just like, what's your body count? What shoes are you wearing? Let me put a diamond tester on your chains. I don't know. It's a different media market there.

But that's what we like that shit, like going between different media, like landscapes and little bubbles of coverage. Right. Yeah. Yeah, because I got, you know, it occurs to me. I was just thinking about this, is that when I was a kid, I had a phase of maybe six months where there was these, like, role player guys at the park in my town.

And they were there were, they were LARPing. They were, they were hitting each other with like swords made of like foam and duct tape and whatnot and speaking and like fake medieval accents and that kind of thing. And I got into it. Like me and my friends would actually just go there and we would like listen to corn and, you know, fight each other with these swords and keep track of our damage or whatever. I'm not sure how deep. We were like 12. Yeah. And I did that for like six months. And when I think about that now, I'm like, you know, I thought that was cool. And then I spent my whole, the whole reference. The rest of my teen years thinking it was so lame that I didn't want anyone to find out that I've done it. And now I'm a grown man and I look at that as like the coolest thing ever. Super. And also like, dude, the fact that you grew up in a pre-cellphone time just goes to show that you were able to do that and walk away from it as a memory. Nowadays, you know, if you were to Larp in a public park and any major city in America, you'd be like on the front page of TikTok. Because if I saw people sword fighting yelling like phrases from Magic to Gathering on my daily commute, I would stop the car, you know, and just record.

it. Maybe not to post online, but just to remember. But I have seen it in recent years. I was riding bikes at UC Irvine, and I saw a bunch of fucking college students doing it, and I couldn't believe it. This is still real. Did you wear a costume? I don't know that

I did, although I think I might have gone to the craft store and got some, like, fake fur and sort of, like, made, like, a little pelt to wear. What were some of the phrases you would yell during this LARP experience? Well, I don't know if there were, like, phrases so much. I don't know if I really got into, like, the voice. aspect of it, but I remember realizing

at a certain point because there was like this one really obese woman who had clearly gravitated towards the social community because of the fact that probably nobody else would have had her. And like she was really you know, I'm just like trying to be careful about what I say here

but she was almost like a corpse of a human. And I just started to realize because people would have bow and arrows and then they would have like foam padding on the end of the arrow and people like my friends included would just like to shoot her with the arrows from time to time and she would just like look around and try to figure out who it was and it was why did you shoot her she just looked like something that you

might want to hit with an arrow at that time again it had foam on the end it's not like it was piercing her skin or anything at what age were you doing this 12 was there a stopping point yeah probably like 13 so a solid year I mean don't you feel like your your hobbies tend to shift a bit once you start to be cognizant of the fact that at some point you're going to want to have sex Yeah, or start to smoke weed. I used to be on the golf team. Yeah. In my high school.

How did you think that that was going to work out for you with women? I don't think it helped. I think that's probably why I stopped. Really? Maybe. I mean, I played baseball too, but the moment I smoked weed, I pretty much all of my baseball aspirations kind of flew at the window. Really?

You can't smoke weed every day and play sports. Oh, I know. Especially if you're 13, because you get high in a way that you'll never be high again. Yeah. Yeah. That was the best. But did you get so high that you thought the teamwork was bad after that? Yeah, probably so.

Yeah. Like, this is stupid. This is just not a good use of my life. Yeah, for sure. Mm. No, I think if I were to be more honest with myself, I would probably admit that smoking weed and, like, getting in really good shape are just not going to continue to occur at the same time in my life.

Absolutely. Mm. Weed just makes you enjoy life too much. Yeah. It makes you not really feel like you have to go the extra mile. How much would you smoke now? I stopped smoking weed when I was like 20. Okay.

I started when I was like 12 and probably smoked weed like mostly every day up until like my late teens. But you know, I got kind of fried from like psychedelics when I was super young. So it just got to the point where I was just getting like a bunch of flashbacks when I would smoke. So I just stopped. But it's kind of funny like to see you ever have friends who have like a late blooming drug phase in their life. Yeah. Like all of my friends who started smoking in college like 18, 19 are now just like the biggest donors ever. Haven't really done much with themselves.

But I'm happy I got out of my sister. when I was in high school. Why are we doing that many hallucinogens? I'm first from Seattle. It's like kind of the culture there. It was just introduced to you super young. Yeah, it's also like a pretty pro psychedelic culture community. Right. So is the bay where Nick is from. So like, you know, it wasn't like, you know, like, shrimps is all we wanted to do. Your parents, your parents never figured out you were doing this?

I bought a book about like mycology. I think it was called like a giant picture book about mushroom types and I was like going out to forage after school. Kind of a giveaway. I tried to convince my mom for a couple weeks that I was into like, you know, mushrooms for medicinal purposes and, like, to make food. And then she picked up on the fact that once I had the tapestry in my room, I think at that point she was like, okay, this kid's eating them.

But you couldn't convince her that, like, you were just into the aesthetics of it, like. I tried as hard as I could. Yeah, but once I got the spirit molecule book about DMT and Aeroid.org as I'd be on their everyday, composing and reading trip reports. If you had a kid, how would you feel if they were 12 and doing mushrooms and smoking blunts all day?

I'd be pissed. Yeah, me too. But I know that, like, I can't stop them, so I would just, like, allow them to, you know, go through that phase in their life. Nah, but I think as a parent, you got to, like, try to jump in between the speeding freight train and the child.

I just don't know how you could possibly control a kid like that. Yeah, but, I mean, if you're going to control them in any way, I feel like keeping them off mushrooms is probably, like, the least you can ask for. Yeah, off mushrooms for sure. I think, you know, if they smoke weed at 13, you know, it's fine. if they do dabs, no way. Yeah.

But, okay, this is the thing about becoming a parent is that you're so used to going through your life of like, you know, if you see a guy and he's going to jump off a fucking building, you're like, well, I don't want to see this dude dot, but if you want to jump off the building, go the fuck ahead. Like, this is your life, really. Yeah, that's what you'd say if you saw a guy on edge of a building. Personally, yeah. If you want to kill yourself, I mean, shit, go for it, man.

I'm going to look away. But once you have a kid, it's like they're trying to kill themselves all the time. Yeah. You're literally just like sworn to try to stop them. That's your whole purpose. Yeah, I think my parents like stayed out of the way because they kind of knew that like the more they pushed back against me doing certain like, rebellious shit, the more I would like take it a step further. So I got it out of my system and now I don't do any rebellious shit.

Right. But if I had asked you during those years what you wanted to do with yourself, because you're kind of like young enough that you had the internet from the very beginning and maybe we're kind of starting to formulate ideas of making content. Yeah. I wanted to be a legendary rapper with a complete wardrobe of Burberry and Big Horse Polos. Okay, but how long did this dream last for? I thought that this was more of a joke, not a super... No, no. I was an intensely... Oh, okay. Basically an egomaniac. Really?

I think I was so high and spent so much time in the studio that age 16, I thought that I was going to be the next... I don't know what I thought I was going to be. Jack Harla? Chief Keefe. I don't know. At the time. But I don't know. That was just me, like, under the influence of a lot of different shit. Right. Not even drugs, just music. Like, I was hypnotized.

Because, yeah, you listen to enough rap and you start to believe that you have to believe in yourself blindly. Yeah. You have to believe you're the greatest. If you're 16 and you grew up in like an inner city and you smoke weed every day and drink every day and you listen to Chief Keefe for like 15 of the hours that you're awake every day for a long period of time

and you wear a designer, you're going to become an alien. But you didn't, you weren't attracted to the street stuff that Chief Kee was talking about? No, I don't think so. You weren't trying to go get a gun? No, definitely not. Right. Well, that's probably good.

Yeah. What about you, Nick? I don't think I ever wanted to be a rapper. Did you listen to rap in high school? Yeah, I listened to Wiz Khalifa. Okay, that's probably a better vibe. Yeah, I wore Converse and reading glasses. Okay, cool.

So I could look like him. To me, Wiz Khalifa will always go down in my mind as the first rapper that a hipster girl told me about. Wow. Like, I didn't know about him. I thought that I knew everything that was going on. Rap-wise, but I'm paying attention to like double X-O in the source, and I hadn't seen him in there yet. Yeah. How old were you? Like 21, 22, when he was first, first coming out. And there was just this white, you know,

hipster type chick I was kicking it with. And she was listening to him like, who's this? And she said, Was Khalifa? And I realized that some of the blogs I was looking at had posted about him. But I was like, oh, okay, rap is changing. Yeah. I just heard black and yellow and it just, I just loved it. Just took over your soul. Yeah. Yeah. For me, that, that lane was like, atmosphere and ASOP rock and like MF Doom and like LP really yeah because I don't know that's like the shit that girls and my dad's friends were interested in girls yeah there was a big MF Doom girl contingent in your school yeah dude like you smoke weed that young you be you get in the lyrical hip-hop that makes your school cooler than my school because I went to an alternative high school

called Northwest oh really yeah we called our teachers by their first names we had mixed gender bathrooms really the the different classrooms were named after like a working class heroes like Caesar Chavez and whatnot. So basically you were, you were groomed to be a champion of civil rights. Yes, basically my whole life. And a rapper. Yeah, a little mix of both. I could infuse some shit.

Make trap music about social justice. Were you embattled with your white identity being mixed into this whole rap persona? Probably as time went on yet. As time went on and I moved to New Orleans, New Orleans for college, I was like, uh-oh. Yeah. Oh, yeah, New Orleans will definitely give you a different. taste of America for sure. Yeah, I was like, I'm not that tough. No, but that is the burden

that every white man has to carry is that nobody wants to hear you rap. Yeah, definitely. But then, like, there's been a handful to have broken through, but it's like, it's very rare. Like, the appetite is just not really there for it, it would seem. Have you seen the Seattle rapper Lil Cito? Yeah, this new guy, yeah.

Yeah, you got to get him on here. What do you think? Yeah, I don't know. I just like... Well, they said he's the white little baby. Wow. Really? Who said I mean like his label or something I think that's like I mean yeah I've seen some press releases going around yeah that's how we describe Nick But realize white little baby yeah yeah okay I could see that no but realize that this is one of like the problems that I face is that At a time early in no jump or even before that or whatever for me as a fan I felt like I was just discovering shit that was just Popping up online yeah and then you get to this point where there's like there's new stuff going on there's people want to talk about oh there's this new rapper there's this new 16-year-old

kiddies dope or whatever. It seems almost more likely that it's something that's being pushed by a label even if it's well disguised than that this is a genuinely holistic thing occurring, you know? Who do you think is the worst rapper of all time?

I heard you ask him, Andrew Fantana, whose three current worst rappers are. Let's do that one. I don't know. I just... You can't say. I just don't really feel like there's a lot for me to gain from shitting up people's careers. Okay, best right now. the best.

I think the best, I kind of feel like rap is in a position where when I think about the rappers, I would most want to hear rap right now. It's a lot of like the number one guy is little baby, Dirk, young boy. I know that this is kind of like what an average 18 year old kid in the suburbs might also tell you would be like the best. But I kind of feel like rap is a meritocracy. We can talk about that.

I don't know if you think that's kind of out of line. Do you think drill music is bad for society? Yeah, definitely. How come? Because people are in gangs, killing each other, making songs about it, and making it it sound super cool. And even me as like a 30-year-old fucking white man, I listen to it, and I think that it sounds kind of cool, and I struggle with that.

But definitely, I think it's probably, as much as I like listen to it, it's probably got to be a net negative for society, right? Yeah. Just the romanticization of violence in general. Do you think you help make it look cool? I don't know. I feel like when they're on a beat with a fucking 808 going crazy and they're able to like rhyme and make less sense

that that probably is like when it sounds coolest. Because they don't really talk about that interviews, right? I mean, most of like all the Chicago gang members or whatever, it's like the amount of like street shit you're going to be able to get them to talk about an interview is pretty minimal in comparison to the stuff that they're essentially saying in their songs. Yeah. just seems like a lot of gang members do come on this podcast

right? No, yeah, definitely. But I just like, okay, there's different ways of being a gang member in your music, right? Like when you look at L.A., that's one thing we always point out is that, you know, Chicago it's so the norm to talk about the intricacies of who you got beef with and shit.

In L.A., they're just very small percentage of artists out here do it. Yeah, it just must be crazy because, like, you talk to so many people who, like, have died recently. you're like the last person to interview FBG Cash right there his name's on the wall

yeah crazy yeah no I just kind of wonder like if you ever feel like with this podcast like if you like platform certain people like if that in turn informs like a lot of the civilian public about like stuff that they might maybe shouldn't know about you know but I mean

if you were to go through that cash interview like what could you really point out that you'd be like look at this crazy shit that he said about somebody else. It's like very little. But then when you listen to songs, it's all out there. That's kind of the conflict of like interviewing people in that position, right?

Yeah. Because like they're not going to want to talk about it in an interview. Exactly. But the music is all about it. Which is this kind of like funny contradiction that you can put it out there in song but then you can't talk about an interview even though I would assume that like legally is probably going to be treated exactly the same.

Yeah, it's a strange thing because then you got to avoid that like whole snitch thing, like criticism of doing it. Well, but the whole thing with, like, lyrics is like lyrics are art. Like, lyrics shouldn't be used in court or whatever. That's a relatively easy argument to make, I would say, but like interview, like an interview's art. Like, you shouldn't be able to use an interview in court. Like, that doesn't sound like that argument's going anywhere. Yeah, for sure. You still talk to CMAC at all? Yeah, we talked to him the other day. Yeah, I talked to him too. He called us from jail. We put some money on his books today, actually. Yeah, I was thinking about doing that too.

It's such a fucking pain in the ass. Every time I've got to figure out how to do it. Yeah. How much do you send him? Like $150. It's funny because one time he put us on group text and he was just like asking for like shoutouts kind of like over and over like. And I realized I'm like, oh, so he does this to Andrew too. Like he's because he has a new Instagram every two weeks.

Yeah. Do you see his only fan? No. I didn't. Yeah, you hit me up right away. Did you watch this? The first video is him like eating ass for him like eating ass for. like 20 minutes but just a random woman not lupa i thought it was lupe yeah until you clarified that it

wasn't because i hit him up and then he was like oh that's not her yeah i don't think lupé would do it they're like brother and sister no super weird but i feel like he likes toying with that idea he wants people to think that that might be what's happening yeah it's a good thing to get people to subscribe to it yeah so okay what what makes how did you describe it critmac and like what made you think like this is you know there's a lot of crazy guys rappers out there like crazy gang members, whatever. Why did you decide this was the guy that was worthy of the Channel 5 treatment? Well, I just thought that he was like a, you know, a great, like a person to interview. I think the 5 on the face, Channel 5, 5. I don't know. I just thought it was like an interesting

character because, you know, and if you watch our interview with him, like we purposely straight away from discussing any type of like gang politics. And that's probably the last interview of that kind we will do. Really? Yeah, just because I feel that like, for example, right, when you cover a subject that relates to like anything about gang culture. You're basically making a bunch of people aware of it who shouldn't be because it's a sad thing. And there's not that many people that are actively involved in violence. And it's kind of what DJ academics did with Warren Shirek,

where he basically turns a sad situation into like a true crime spectacle for millions of people to mythologize and look in from the outside. And before you know it, that in turn amplifies conflict in the streets because it just creates a YouTube algorithm that facilitates like all these off-seat bloggers who dedicate their time to like explaining these beefs that are sad and people shouldn't know about. So I felt that I'm happy that we did the interview with him, but that's why we took him to the Slipknot concert. And that's why we went to Skid Row is like we didn't want to ask him like, how do you feel about your enemies? What would you do if you saw them?

And it's just, I don't know. It's a tough one. That was the thing, the biggest rule we ever put on them or the main thing. Because like, okay, the first interview we didn't tell them, don't talk about your enemies or whatever, which is extra. prickly for us because people who are directly involved with the brand who technically are part of street shit that he's opposed to, whatever.

And so the first interview, after he got done, he says to his manager, I think it was ODM Slim at the time, he says you like that? I didn't diss my enemies. So I was like, okay, that's interesting. He wanted to make a point out of it. This is his first interview. He wants to make a point out of not dissing his enemies or whatever. But then as time goes

by, I'm sure you notice this. Every time you're around Kirkback, you would kind of get like a different version. version of him. Yeah. Where he might be like really happy, jovial. And then I've also dealt with like the super like down and the dumps kind of like low energy Crip Mac. I'm sure the fans see it at home too.

But yeah, we definitely did like one episode where he was dissing other hoods and stuff. Yeah. I just mean the general public is obsessed with gangs. Like the YouTube population is obsessed with knowing all this information about different rivalries and stuff. And like I said, creating a true crime thing for them to follow. And so I didn't feel like I wanted to like encourage or promote or grow that sort of online following.

Because if you look at what happened in Chicago. I mean, just, it was such an internet shitstorm. Like me in Seattle, just being a kid listening to this music, before, you know, I knew it, I was in a six-hour YouTube hole learning all this information about like, DeWare in Shirek, different, I know all of these, I don't even want to say them, I know somebody different, like, names of gangs and names of people who have passed away.

These are people that I have never met and would have never known about if it wasn't for, like, the music, journalism, true crime thing that emerged from, like, the music that blew up. So I felt like I had a responsibility to do that, and then kind of step away from it. I know this platform's a bit different. Yeah.

But, you know, it is, it's a sad thing. Like, if you think about why some of these gangs started, it is because of shit like segregation and redlining. And it, I feel like it validates a thing that is sad when you put someone in a gang on a platform and you make it something, they're really doing something. You know, like, this is important. Like, it validates, like, a negative, destructive way of life

because you're like, oh, yep, like, you are this. like you can get a big platform by coming on my show and talking about that. But it's like, you know, as a contact creator, you kind of have to follow the incentives to a certain extent. And it's like when the people tell you that they want to hear about something, you know, it's like, because I've done many interviews in my day with people that I thought were doing something dope artistically or whatever and it just goes nowhere because they have no, you know, there's nothing to really hang their hat on. There's nothing like really interesting bringing people into it. Then you could interview that same rapper two years later when there's

some kind of conflict that happened, something people genuinely want to hear about, and people are all over it. You know, it's like, it's tough to get away from the fact that the fans just want what they want. Have you ever turned down an interview because you didn't, you like thought it was unethical or something? Yeah, definitely, definitely probably a lot of interviews I've turned down in terms of like, you know, not wanting to bring attention to certain things or, you know, just platforming people in general. I mean, I know you guys kind of deal with that as well, where it's like who you talk to or who you don't talk to is just really saying a lot about what you think your company stands for it. Yeah, that's why I wanted to ask you about it because, you know, we deal with the same thing.

Definitely. Well, it brings me to a quote that I wanted to bring up that I always think about which is the medium is the message. Like, how does the platform that you're uploading content to or putting content on, how does that change the content itself? Like, I was listening to a podcast the other day that was talking about how Abraham Lincoln as a president probably could not have existed in the TV age. He's like sad, tall, weird, super

serious, just like a very like not made for TV type of figure, but then TV comes around and who you get. You get John of Kennedy. You get like a polished fucking celebrity. Yeah. Who a lot of people didn't really agree with on politics, but they liked him. Yeah. They wanted to see this guy

on TV. They was the type of guy that they would like to hang out with. And so, you know, now have something as serious as the presidency essentially being you know i don't think anybody thinks don't know if not for his prior celebrity but then on youtube it's kind of like the same thing where you see it in more extreme forms when you look at some of the kid YouTubers and stuff who are just doing the weirdest shit imaginable i don't know if you're familiar with j-station no i'm not what's that i mean he was just like a YouTuber who started to get those kid views and so then all a sudden he starts doing like 4 a.m.

Haunted bear attacks me in my sleep video. And he would have like a little like toy bear. And then all of a sudden he's doing like an exorcism of the bear. And when I watch this, it is like I'm watching something from another fucking planet because it's so far removed from anything that I could ever imagine wanting to view at all. But I guess like to kids, like they genuinely think it's scary. And then he's doing shit with like the Sesame Street characters and all these fucking things that they know about. I think he ended up getting banned or whatever off YouTube,

but it was like really creepy. And this is just like someone who was 100% following what the algorithm was telling him to do. I got into him because he was doing like where he was like right after X died or right after Mac Miller died. I think it was. He was like communicating with them with a Ouija board through, you know, pretending to be having conversations with them. So I'm like literally like my homie just died the next day this video is on YouTube with 4 million views.

Yeah. And I'm just, like, genuinely, like, offended, but also, like. It's pretty whack. This is pretty much what this platform has done to our society, I guess. Yeah, kid YouTube is crazy. Like, my cousin's, like, six years old.

And she was like, are you going to do a video with Mr. Beast? And I was like, holy shit. Because YouTube, like, centers are so heavy, and they are not into, like, the language and shit. But if you can start making videos for kids and parents can improve it, you're on your way to, like, a billion YouTube dollars. Yeah.

But that's the war that we fight. I mean, every single video that we make gets age-restricted, demonetized. Every single one? I would say we've probably made like two grand off YouTube. Oh my God. Wow, that's amazing. Oh, yeah.

The only video that we ever had that wasn't demonetized was like, what was that one? No idea. Evan, do you know? Bigfoot hunting. Yeah. Because it was such a jovial, like, kid-friendly topic. But if we do a video called, like, Hollywood anti-vax rally, there's just no way that YouTube's going to let us make a cent off of it. That's why we use Patreon.

It's the only way we can support our whole grind. Wow. I didn't even know that. That's crazy. Yeah, this is a Patreon powered operation. Yeah. We got a little bit of that going on too, but definitely we make good money off YouTube. Sometimes I feel like I should really thank my blessings for that.

Because, like, my boy, dope is Yola. He told me that he did the calculations throughout his career on YouTube. He should have made $3 million, but he's actually made like $1,000. Because he smokes weed. And that's like him making mostly weed-related content is the whole reason. Yeah, that's as big as kid in it. You know what I mean? Also, you had the Hoff Twins on.

Shout out to my guy, Nick. He made that documentary. That was incredible. Yeah, you liked it? Thanks. Yeah, I mean, those are just like two dudes who are like, you know, anyone who spent time in hoods of America knows some guys that maybe not as charismatic as them, but embody some of that energy, like those random white guys that are just accepted because they're just a little too fun to hang out with.

Yeah, yeah. Just to see them like put on that stage was honestly kind of incredible. Did you like having them on? Yeah, they could use some help with, the actual art of podcasting. There was a lot of talking over each other, which I almost didn't mind because they're kind of like just sort of talking in circles to such an extent

that you can kind of listen to two of them at the same time and it's almost like one guy. Yeah, it's like a surreal peanut gallery type of thing. Yeah, because they're just like repeating themselves about a lot of things. They have the same voice. And they're kind of building on each other's previous sentences. It's actually quite coherent.

But for the average viewer, they have to pick one. There's actually a twin convention in Ohio two weeks from now. and you're going to go with them I want to bring him there that's a plan yeah oh my god we've been having a weird couple weeks

we went to an earnest having way lookalike competition last weekend wow before then we went to a stampede in Canada it's been it's been quite the time wow that's amazing I just want to say that my mom recently revealed to me that she got I think

first place in a Shirley Temple lookalike contest when she was like five I thought that was just a drink no it was a celebrity that was named after yeah apparently I'm not terribly sure what she looked like but damn yeah okay

But so because when you think about the crib might think, I feel like with you guys, the brand of Channel 5 is more about dipping into a lot of different subcultures and revealing the intricacies of weird things going on in America or beyond. So that's like with the CRIB MAC thing, I kind of felt like, oh, that was like the most extreme, most funny version of that that you're ever gonna find.

You might as well just do that coverage and then just keep it moving. and find something else interesting, right? Yeah, because we have to cover, you know, a bunch of different subcultures at one time. We wanted to find someone who we felt embodied, like, at least that subculture in the media sense. Yeah.

Yeah. Definitely. And he brought the fun and the life to that kind of thing, too, which a lot of people, it's just not, like, he was just having too much fun. Yeah. I love that guy. Yeah.

I love him, too. Yeah. He's a complicated guy to be around, though. I had him give a shout out to my mom for her 55th birthday, and he gave a really sweet message. Right. I think he said to sit back and enjoy a nice soap opera. Right.

Yeah, that's what he thinks Nick's mom. A soap opera. Wait, but a lot of people think you really got your ass beat by him, huh? So annoying. Yeah, well, I kind of edited it to make it look that way. Crip Mac punched Nick's camera, a Z90 documentary camera, because Nick didn't back down and he swung his hand with the camera toward Critmac. Krip back intercepted the camera, smashed it, and then that was the end of the shot.

But we made some merch that says no custer's where there's a picture of Nick getting punched in the face by Kripmack. So now whenever we travel, people see me and they say, yo, where's the guy who got his ass beat by Kripmack? And so real quick, that shirt, a member of my girl's family, who I would say is not a super hardcore hip-hop fan, maybe a bit closer to the Normie side of things. I saw him wearing that shirt at a family function, and that's when I really knew that you guys had helped take CRIMAC to the next level. Yeah.

We were in Hungary, and there were an entire bar full of people saw me, and they were like, you're the guy that got punched in the face. Yeah. It was a Marxist bar in Hungary where there was, like, statues and photos of communist heroes everywhere. And they're like, you're the guy who got beat up by Crip Mac. Yeah, yeah.

Also, in that point, we realized we had maybe, you know. Insane. Yeah. Yeah. In the elevator in Dubai on the layover also. Yes. He looked at you and said a friendly fade or something. Yeah.

So I'm glad we can clear the air. Friendly fade. Yeah. I'm glad we can finally clear the air. Nick was not struck even one time. Didn't get beat up. Right. Definitely didn't get beat up.

When you see that like three million views or whatever that video is at, you know, you really don't know who the fuck is watching it. Every human being. I've been in a lot. lot of YouTube videos I'm gonna be honest with you that got you know a million views and I never had anybody say anything to me ever like from like other YouTubers do some collab with them whatever and I it gets a million views I never hear a word about it and then sometimes I'll be on somebody's channel and it's like everything that anyone says to me for months yeah it's weird back to what I was saying though I don't I don't mean this in like a confrontation way I'm just

actually wondering like do you feel any responsibility for like inflaming like gang beef by having so many gang members use this platform to promote themselves? No, because I mean, I feel like this is a hip-hop platform that long ago has kind of been clear to me that that's more or less the gist of what we're doing, you know? And it's like when we have brought in, like, it was a long time where I didn't do any street shit, you know, in the beginning. It was mostly like SoundCloud type stuff and more like avant-garde, you know, internet shit. And then, you know, over time we bring AD and T-REL and all these people in and they're bringing

more LA artists on and stuff. And, you know, we do end up, we've gone more in that direction. And, like, a lot of, like, it's also the direction rap's gone in in the sense that, like, you know, if anything, we have that conversation of, like, do you see rap getting past the street stuff being the vast majority of hip hop at any point? And it's weird to me that people seem like they've kind of shut the door on that in their mind. I'm used to seeing hip hop be so cyclical over the years that, to me, it's kind of, I can imagine rap being less focused on that at some point. But it's like if we're going to accurately cover hip hop, I mean, that is a very large percentage of like, you know, relevant hip hop music is gang related. You know, when you look at like pretty much every scene that's coming up in America, whether it's like Chicago or Brooklyn or the Bronx or even like a lot of the stuff that's really popping out of Atlanta and stuff, I mean, it's pretty like unavoidable to be able to hit on people who are doing street stuff. Even if you don't know, you end up finding later that they're like the situation.

with YFN Lucci and YSL. I mean, like when I interviewed YFN Lucha, I had no fucking clue that his shit was like that, you know? Yeah. I mean, I feels like you kind of have to, because there's so little in rap that doesn't also touch on the street shit. Do you feel like that the shift in that direction had to do with sort of the death of the SoundCloud era?

Well, I think when you look at SoundCloud rap, it was basically a lot of, and not 100%, because there's like a lot of, a lot of different stuff that fell under the SoundCloud umbrella or whatever. But if you look at like a little pump and smoke perp to a lot of people that's kind of like that was SoundCloud rap.

I mean, they're talking about crazy ass. Shoot them up, bang, bang, street shit and drug shit. And the drug shit is for sure real. But the violent stuff, you know, it's more performative, I would estimate for the most part. And then like right after them,

you kind of see them get sort of like replaced by dudes like, you know, young boy or, Dirk and all these guys who realistically they've all got cases, they've all fucking, you know, it's out there that they're probably more in the streets than a lot of the SoundCloud dudes, you know? Yeah. And I think now at this point with the internet and stuff, it's like the expectation of authenticity is so strong that it's kind of like hard for you to imagine a rapper pop off talking about gangster shit unless he actually had something that he could like point to some kind of proof or some kind of affiliation or whatever. It's like they kind of need that at a certain point because the audience is so trained to want to poke holes

in your story. So why do you feel like that change happened? I think the audience just consistently just becomes more nuanced and more educated and they like they know what they're looking at more and more. And with the rise of the YouTube documentary, which I think is like about rappers and whatnot and street shit, which I think is kind of like

an under-talked-about phenomenon in terms of how much that has changed shit and changed like people's understanding. Like if you were talking about gang shit with the Chicago shit in 2011, 2012, you know, like you could figure out shit, but it was not so easy. Yeah. Now it's like all 100% out there. So you feel like the rise of like independent fact-checking YouTubers who's like sole mission is to prove if a rapper's like fake or real has caused in turn the industry to shift to like prefer like real people? I would say that's just one of many factors.

Yeah. That has sort of like led the consumers to become so much. more well versed and and so much more curious about what they're looking at. Yeah. But also I mean there's just a lot more rappers in general like 2012 like how many chief keefs were there. I mean it was pretty much just like him and his friends, right? And then yeah now every city has people who are kind of inhabiting these archetypes, right? Yeah, we just went there to Oblock to as a part of our documentary that we're doing on the Chicago rap festival. We talked to boss top a lot about like the early days of drill and just how

it like spread to the entire world. And now that seems to be like the most popular type of rap music. Like even if you think about California, right, like Stockton and Sacramento music that's popping, that's pretty much drill. But there's two different ways to define drill too, right? There's kind of like the sonic element, which is like every artist out of New York these days is like basically trying to sound like,

you know, it's a sound. And then you have like drill meaning dudes talking about all this street shit and who got shy and putting all this like super super real content because the Stockton shit doesn't necessarily sound like the fucking pop smoke records or whatever, but they're talking all this super real street shit. Stockton, Stockton, Jacksonville, Brooklyn, Detroit, Chicago, you know, most modern rap scenes that I can think of that are super viral. All the lyrics are about murder. And there's people making documentaries immediately after the songs come out, putting faces behind the lyrics, especially with the Jacksonville.

thing. You know, after the, you know, the Julio-Bulio Young In A shit. Some of the documentaries that came out as a result of like the Who I Smoke song and the shit that went back and forth like really blew my mind. It made me realize like, goddamn, like they're rapping about like people who just died.

Right. Dozens of people. Yeah, no. I mean, that was insane for sure. That was some of the weirdest shit I ever seen. Like I remember Brandon Buckingham went there and he did he did interviews with like kids hanging out of the store. Yeah. And just like asking them what they thought about it.

And it was, I mean, it's revealing, because that's a side of it that you don't get to see. It's like how did the people who are around here who feel like there's a decent chance that they could get hit by a straight bullet? How do they feel about all this? Yeah, it's interesting too, because like, you know, peep and X, which is like two of the biggest interviews

you did in the early SoundCloud days. Those were, you know, adjacent to like the underground, like rap world that had nothing to do with that. And those were number one guys. Yeah. And I wonder if that could ever happen again. Yeah, because, all right, in terms of like the cyclical nature of rap, I always think about when 50 kind of got phased out and replaced by Kanye and you see this whole new thing emerging in rap where you have somebody who's like entirely nonviolent who's just super interesting and more into fashion and street shit or whatever. And then you see Kanye, you know, this is this historic thing where he sells more records of 50 and then 50's career doesn't necessarily ever really fully recover from there.

I mean, you just kind of wonder. Like, is there an avant-garde, artistic, rap star who could come out and cause a cultural change so much that it would actually impact? Or is there anything that could happen that would disincentivize violence or, like, talking about violence or making your song so themed around that?

Like, what could possibly happen in the culture that would make that less of a thing? Maybe there could be a resurgence in, like, horror core music where the rappers is lying about like school shootings and like shit like you know m&m style ghouls and monsters yeah like slaying demons and sci-fi shit i mean really remember those that era imagine if someone did a fact-checking documentary about one of those guys yeah did he really even emm actually kill his wife because here's a picture of her alive and all the comments like fuck this fool he's a pose yeah what if what if rap was more like death metal

yeah every song is about like dismembering somebody yeah but then but you haven't everyone assumes you haven't dismembered anyone. What does dismembering mean? It's like removing your member. Yeah. For years, some members. For most of my life, I thought it meant to kick someone out of like a private circle.

Like you're no longer a member. I was wonder why it was included with decapitation. It's like ripping someone from head to toe, I'm pretty sure. But you go through a death metal phase? No. I've been a rap fan my entire life. Actually, I liked Metallica and Incubis up until I was like nine. Right.

And then I think an M&M show, and then like Jay Dilla Instrumentals, Cush and Orange Juice, Mix Tate, State versus Radrick Davis, Flockaveli, took over my entire thought patterns. Right. Because sometimes I think about how I'm going to explain to my kid what is going on in a lot of these songs. You're going to have some explaining to do. Oh, yeah. And you know, one thing I always think, like, I could maybe go back to. It's because I listen to Misfits a lot for some reason. and let's just become like the main punk band

that I still actually listen to. And I listen to their lyrics and I'm like, well, what the fuck are they talking about? They're talking about a bunch of stupid, made up, ghoul, Halloween shit. Yeah. I think I'm gonna try to convince my kid like, oh yeah, like Julio Fulio's talking about shooting somebody,

but he's just playing. He's just joking around. People should make angsty drill music about their own families. You know what I mean? Yeah. After being grounded or something like that. Right.

I think a big part of it too is, like, To be a juice world is very hard. To be an X is very hard. To be a drill rapper, it seems a little bit more. It's right there for you to grab. Yeah, totally. If all else fails. My boy, Shubox baby from Oblock, he got like a couple hundred thousand views on all his videos.

And then he dissed young boy in one song. Boom, 1.5 million. We interviewed him. Oh, he was there? In O'Block two weeks ago. He was cool. But during the interview, he was like, everything in every song is fiction. It's all created by the media.

Yeah. We're like, all right. Well, them old blog boys are scared now. You're hearing the new Dirk album at the very beginning. It says, this shit is all, cap, this is not real. They put an asterisk on everything. Like, no RICO, please. Yeah.

That shit is terrifying. State RICO cases. You see they said another one's coming soon. Two more. Atlanta DA said two more are coming, and they didn't reveal which major rapper is going to be taken down. We looked into this more because I said on the podcast. that it was rappers, but I'm pretty sure it's just, but she said high profile.

So it's kind of like high profile makes me think rappers, but maybe it could be somebody else. Yeah, I have an idea if it could be. Yeah, well, there's a lot of theories being floated out there. Yeah. Renaud Mars. Yes. That is what I've been thinking about. Fucking, what's his name?

The 55th Street, Rico. You're in it, Nick. Yeah, they're going to take you down. That friendly fate was serious. Dang. Yeah, definitely. So, dude, ask me anything. Fuck it.

Ask you anything. You want me to refer to the list? I'm sure I wrote down all kinds of intelligence stuff. Ooh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I wanted to talk about hitchhiking. Yeah. Because I think that says a lot about who you were as a young man or what you were hoping to get out life.

What led you in that direction? Well, like, after high school, you know, like I was all on the rap until I had like a high school journalism class and the teacher would let me like basically skip school to go report on different shit, like the Occupy movement in Seattle, like wrote about juggalo's. So that just made sense to you to just go be around weird shit that was going on and just report on it.

I always liked it, you know. I was like being front road as shit that I was just like shocked by. And it kind of became like how it entertained myself. Right. And I went to this program, journalism program in Louisiana. And they were just preparing me for like a media world that was totally over. Because they had written the course for the shit like 10 years before I went there. So they were preparing me to either write for a local newspaper or like be a weatherman in Panama City Beach, Florida.

There's some horrendous position. So I decided that like I wanted to go out there like road style and just write weird stories about people that I met on like the super fringe of society. Right. So the summer after my freshman year of college, I just like left all my shit in my dorm Went to the Greyhound station took a Greyhound to Baton Rouge and from there I just hitchhiked for like 70 days And did you even care who was gonna be reading these stories or what was the plan for getting them out there into the world? What's crazy is I didn't write the book about it which was called all gas snow breaks Which is like the name's sake of the show until two years after that I did it for myself Right, but then I had all these like journals and voice memos from that period of time and I was like goddamn. I got to do something with this

Right so I moved to New York basically transcribed them, published through this company called 8 Ball, but it didn't do too good. So I was like, all right, I'm going to do this independently. Went back to Seattle, did a reading at the store called Art Primo. And then from there, my goal when I first made the book is like, I want to sell one book to someone I've never met before. And just, you know, go beyond like the I'm supported by my friends thing. And once I sold that first one, it just kept going, probably sold like 500 copies. And that was like my first achievement.

Wow. It's kind of crazy when you think about that early period in your life where now, you make something and you're kind of used to by default like millions of people are going to see it. Yeah. And when you're like younger painting in your room or whatever the fuck it is, it's like you have no expectation of people seeing it and it's like I don't know it kind of changes the way you create, right? Yeah, I think it you make you create raw shit when you're younger and you're just doing it for yourself versus now when you have like this insane instant feedback gratification loop where you're instantly like when you make something you can tell if it's good by how many views and comments it gets. You know so it kind of takes the value away from being. like art for art's sake if you are especially a YouTuber where you make something you pump it out the next day like if I make a video that I love you know and like my community or the fans aren't really fucking with it as much as the other videos it kind of weighs on me I still appreciate art for art's sake but I'm thinking like that I do something wrong how can I adjust the next video to make it cater more to my audience right that's why it becomes so fucked up and that's why so many creators I think burn out because they're making shit for their fans now because it becomes their

business model and way of life. Right. But it's all about like what you sort of coax your audience into being ready for because you guys like when you click on a fucking like I was honestly I look at your channel and I see the title like Fish Parking Lot and I'm like thinking

in my head like that is not a good title like a huge percentage of your audience doesn't even know what who the fuck fish is. I'm having to explain to my girl who fishes I don't even I'm like it's a fucking band I don't know anything about them besides the fact that they're old and jam bandish and but your audience has been primed to know that every video is going to be good and that you don't really need to know

anything about the subculture going in. Yeah, we purposely undermarket. You know, we don't do any like keyframes or catchy titles. We just kind of tell you what it is because we think that, you know, saying less and showing more is more effective in the long run. But it's different. Like, for example, this platform, you do interviews, multiple interviews a day here. We probably put out a video every couple weeks.

Yeah. So people look forward to it as a sole piece of content. So we don't have to be like, you're never going to believe what this guy said at the fish lot. And it's like a cut out of me like screaming or something. Yeah. And it's kind of like that that's two different approaches to making content is like do stuff that is so good that every time you drop, it's just a fucking banger and it's guarantee it's going to get millions of views or whatever. Or like me or Vlad where we just do a lot. And it's always made so much sense to me because I remember like very early on in No Jumper, there were. was just like a Pokemon Go YouTuber that I really wanted to interview

because I was watching them all the time. And I'm like thinking to my head like, ah, shit, well, your platform is getting bigger. Like, does it make sense for you to interview somebody who's like kind of doing something so niche? But like that for me is like the thing that I'm doing here is I'm like really just exploring shit that I'm interested in for the most part.

And so I kind of, I don't know. I don't know if I could ever be the kind of YouTuber. I could imagine doing a specific show where we really aimed to, like when I was, uh, watching you on hot ones yeah they're not gonna do an episode unless they know it's gonna be a big episode right yeah it's different outlook different strategies man are you friends with vlad yeah what's that like is he cool he's cool i mean he's like uh i mean he's been making rap content like damn near longer than anybody ever like people don't know how long he's been fucking in the rap

game like he was a big mixtape dj and shit and he always kind of like embraced me from the beginning And it's like a lot of people don't like him, but I feel like he wrote the playbook for what like hip hop YouTube was going to be so many years ago and took all the fucking damage being the first person through the wall. Yeah. And now everything he does is just normal. Why do you think people don't like him? Um, I mean, he has a way conversationally for sure. Like he speaks, like he doesn't interview like he's making it for YouTube. Like the way that these questions are just sort of flowing all over the place, which.

I feel like that sort of softens people up and it makes it like for a better conversation. His is kind of opposite of that where it's sort of rigid and it's like we're gonna get the answers to these questions for these clips. And that's kind of like off putting to some people. There's been a few like things like shitty said

about Minister Farrakhan. They got him in hot water or whatever. But like I don't know. I feel like the vast majority of the reason why some people don't fuck with him is just because he fucking basically invented everything that everybody on rap YouTube is doing. And he got all the shit

for it for being the same way that with all the news and gossip shit academics gets all the shit for it is because he was just the first one he sort of like invented the template you know yeah it's been effective for us because whenever we interview rappers like we straight up say like we're not gonna ask you any Vlad type questions yeah and they know what that means yeah it's he does get a like it shit on but he does some great interviews especially the boozy ones oh yeah the busy ones well that's a template that he really kind of invented as well where he just has a cameraman go to boozy's basement and he does the interview from afar from all the way over here in California or whatever and he gets like a three hour interview and then he cuts it

into pieces puts it out and boom he's also he basically like started the practice of people and interviewers paying artists as well yeah the creepiest rap interviewer to me is probably a DJ small eyes the one is like so how many types have you been shot I knew what is that like with that bullet permeated your flesh my brain was a hundred percent sure you were going to say that before you said it just for the record like as soon as you like creepy as YouTube dude is. I was like who would agree

it's like the like the worst porn director of all time. I saw one like like I swear I only click on his shit to see if it's actually as insane as what the title is. Yeah.

And I saw one where he was like it was like so and so talks about what high school about what it was like going to this or reveals what high school she went to and I'm like what percentage of your audience do you think even knows you know like how many high school do I know.

I know the one I went to and I know Hollywood high because I've been on They're on my bike many times. Were you scared? You wouldn't graduate? What kind of grades did you have? What does it feel like to smoke a blunt?

Yeah. Yeah, where he can... What do you smell like? I would like to hear an interview with him. I would love to know where he's coming from. You need to go... Yeah, we got to turn the cameras around. Do you really have small eyes?

A day in the life of him. I imagine his tiny, beady lizard-like eyes. And why is a small-ey-ey-lizard-like eyes? Yeah, who is small-ey-ey-one? Did you kill him? take his eyes from him did you have another channel and why has this channel clearly

taking priority here? Yeah, I watch so much of that shit. I get in these YouTube holes where I'm like, I got to get out of here. The mafia interview YouTube holes really bad when you're like two hours into like Michael Franzisi and Sammy the Bull interviews. You're like learning about the coast of no show while you're hung over. You're like, I got to

leave the house, bro. Yeah. No, for sure. But that, I don't know, I don't know. Sometimes I don't find that fascinating about the mafia guys. Like, Vlad when I watch him interview those guys, he knows everything. I just, it doesn't, I don't remember it. Another disturbing YouTube whole is like Jordan Belfort financial advice videos. You like that stuff?

I don't like it, but I'm just there all the time. I talk to him more than my own parents. Really? Not talk to him, but, you know, I'm there with him. Have you become engaged with the TikTok algorithm? No, I'm trying to avoid that shit, man. I'm old, I'm 25. Ever since they told me that the, and that's, I'm 13 years older than you,

but ever since they told me that the percentage of a, you know, I forget a percentage of an 18 year old's time that is being spent on YouTube is officially going down because it's being replaced by TikTok and reels or whatever. Yeah, I just like to do my shit and not like chase the dwindling attention span that like comes with Gen Z. Because there's a lot of interesting creators on there. There's people making sick shit on TikTok and I just don't want to be totally blind to them. What I do is I just like we just hired someone to like take our YouTube videos cut them down and make TikToks out of them. But like for me, if I'm not enjoying using the platform, I'm not going to just do it for the sake of like lowering my median age. I'm just trying to use it more so

that I can sort of figure out what the fuck people like about it so much because to me it doesn't feel that different than looking at Instagram now, which I guess is Instagram's whole point of existing now is that they just want to take TikTok's market share. But I kind of think,

I kind of think that maybe Instagram and Facebook doubling down on making their app more TikTok like might be because they think that TikTok is going to get banned. Shoebox baby thinks that social media companies have a responsibility to limit the distribution of

violent threats and gang related content. He said that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when you take a look at what they're already limiting, it's kind of like a peek into what that dystopian world is going to be like, I think. Because, I mean, on Instagram, like everybody I know just gets deleted

off Instagram for any old thing these days. So I'm very... That would be great if you could assure that that would be happening in a you know, a good way, but like, look at King Yella. King Yellow's on his, like, seventh Instagram. It just gets deleted because it's like, and it's the same thing, Crip Mac. If you're in a gang, if there's thousands of people who don't like you,

just by birthright because you're in this gang, they're going to report you and you're going to lose your Instagram. And it just seems that if there's powerful people or smart people who want to get your Instagram down, it's just going to happen. What do you think it would be like if you were in a gang? I don't know. Have you considered joining a gang to defend, offend yourself? No. From rival

podcasters? No. Well, we are a gang. Channel 5. No, I would want. I feel like a gang, it's like picking a religion. You got to do it when you're really, really young and your brain's still soft. But some people go Muslim in jail.

Yeah, and I never really understood that. I knew a girl who did like a whole... She got her degree in religious studies and decided she wanted to be Muslim at some point along the way. I'm like, I feel like getting your degree and religious studies is kind of like the ultimate person that should not actually pick one of these religions. My favorite Adam 22 conspiracy theory is that you were at satanic Freemason. Yeah.

Have you seen those online before? Yeah. Because I barely even know what a Freemason is. Since you said you were an atheist, people think you have a satanic agenda. And I have LOLed pretty hard. Some of those comments. The medium is the message. I feel like that's like such a good thumbnail.

like accusing me of being part of some sort of, you know, cult, that it's like, it doesn't matter if the video doesn't really make that much sense or if there's like no meat to the argument, you know? Your last name is Grand Mason. Yes. Oh. Do you descend from a Freemason background? No.

I was actually just at my uncle's funeral, and I can confirm that my entire family lineage is a bunch of old-ass New Hampshire Democrats. Okay. Working in local politics. Still? Well, most of them probably retired at this point. Sounds like a Freemason family, man. Sounds like what a Freemason would say.

Do you know about the stone cutters? No. Damn it. I keep saying that to people, and they keep not knowing what I'm talking about. It's like an old school Simpsons episode. Damn it. Homer was rolling a boulder up a hill.

Okay. I'm going to, I mean, somehow all that just came from me bringing up hitchhiking. This is what happens when interviewers, interviewers. Okay. This was one thing that I saw, and it really stood out to me, it was like, wow, this guy is great. He's doing a fucking acrobatic act with this.

It was the moment where you're interviewing the Christian preacher, and you're, like, making fun of him. And then you're kind of, like, alternating, switching back to the goth girl who's talking about being molested by her dad, and you're having to actually be empathetic to her. And this was just, like, an insane juggling act that I'm watching because it's like you're doing like you're parodying this guy and then you're being like a therapist to this girl who's clearly been some traumatic shit yeah i think it's like

almost like a 10 000 hours kind of thing you know like we oscillate between uh parody and empathy so frequently right it's just an instant brain shift for me and i can just pick up on the vile like all right christian preacher screaming about the incoming doomsday girl opening up about some terrible shit it's so different to me that i can somehow just like keep two conversations going at once It's all about the moving of the microphone. Right. Yeah, especially if they don't know what the other one is saying, you can basically keep two.

The best thing you can hope for is to be like, I call it like, between enemy lines or something. As a journalist where like both sides sort of think that you're on their team because you're appearing like, I agree with you or like, I'm there, I'm on your team. What, nod? Toddler nod. The toddler nod. I talk about the toddler nod all the time.

That's actually a Louis Thoreau technique. The first dude did toddler nod. Right. Tyler nodding is my favorite interview technique. It's where you're not saying I agree with you, but you're saying I'm there with you. It's like this. You're doing it right now. It's even smaller.

It's even smaller. But it's weird because the camera's probably not on me. What's the smallest nod you can do? Even smaller. Here's one. Well, the smaller you make it, the more it might be that you're just sort of bouncing in your chair a little bit. Or I'll say, hmm. I'll say, hmm.

Or they'll give me shit because I say, interesting. Hmm. It's better than that's crazy. That's crazy. is so offensive yeah so offensive damn you have a girlfriend and just say that's crazy to her like nowadays they get it though they know that you don't really think that shit's crazy oh our homegirl says one that's worse oh fuck yeah that shit's word damn oh fuck is like what you know what I said yeah I said I was like I'm hell

I'm hella like hungry she's like oh fuck but there's there's a purpose for the it's like reminding the audience that you're still there because that's kind of like a weird thing that happens when you're doing an interview is that if you're interviewing somebody and then go off on a tirade for 10 minutes and You start to feel it like, oh, this is starting to feel a lot less like an interview and a lot more like you making a YouTube video sitting across from me. Yeah. Oh, for sure. That must be so annoying, man.

Yeah. But then sometimes, okay, for instance, like the other day I interviewed fucking Paul Wall and terminology. So terminology is just like super technical fucking battle rapper, or not battle rapper, but rapper from Boston. Paul Wall is from fucking Texas. Obviously just, they do music together now, but they're from completely different worlds. And like doing that interview at the same time and having to sort of like bounce around between their careers and accomplishments

stood out to me as like, wow, that's like expert tier shit right there. Like the fact that I was able to do a pretty good job and that stood out to me a lot, but then watching you do that with two people who are clearly just experiencing completely different parts of life was intense. Like explaining a mortal technique to Paul Wall.

Sounds tough. I feel like Paul Wall probably like knows a thing or two about a mortal technique. Because he's a hip hopper, dude. Like, that's one thing with Paul Wall is that I think the labels try to push him out there as this, like, complete parody jeweler guy. But then when you actually listen to his music, he's like, real hip-hop guy. Well, speaking of Paul Wall, I've actually been in touch with Johnny Dang. He's designing me a custom top and bottom grill.

Johnny Dang called me and asked me pull-outs or permanence. And you said? Pull-outs. Yeah. But I like that Johnny Dang thinks that I want permanent diamond teeth. I mean, what are you saving yourself for? Well, Johnny Dang's giving me like an insane day. discount for the promo so right I'm gonna go to Houston but do you think you're gonna like it

having a grill yeah I'm the only time will tell I got one Robert Pattinson has one at the first time I like really actually got like a lot of money some guy from my fucking gym just said to me like I'm a jeweler you should let me make you a grill I was like boom I dropped eight grand on grill I probably wore it for a combined total of maybe like four hours yeah and then it just went in the drawer and I haven't thought about it since I wanted to ask you, you went on kind of like a finance-adjacent podcast, and you told those two guys that you make a million a month. Do you regret telling people how much you make from the podcast?

All right. This is my thought process on that, is that I clearly knew what I was doing by throwing that out there, and I clearly also was just sort of throwing a round number out there, you know? It's weird because, like, rappers are so transparent about how much money they make. And I even see rappers, like, post their fucking images of the app. on their phone like showing how much money they have the jewelry is like pretty transparent they you know love to have money in videos and stuff sometimes i feel like as a content creator it's kind of weird because the audience looks at you like whatever and they don't have

any fucking clue and it's like me or vlad or academics i know what like roughly all them make and we all make fucking way more money than most rappers but the audience doesn't fucking know that and so at a certain point like going on that podcast i knew he was going to ask and i was like Like, you know what, that's a number that I feel comfortable throwing out there. Now, does that take into account all the different businesses that I own, basically? Yes. Does it take into account the expenses that we have? Not really.

Yeah, you're not taking home a million. No. That's the operating budget, right? That'd be nice, though. Yeah, because it's like this, remember that guy, that journalist who tried to, like, get us saying, oh, they make $100,000 a month on Patreon. Yeah. But we spend the vast majority of that covering travel, hotels, production,

expenses, editors, like every trial and tribulation that comes with running a set out of an RV and a rental house in L.A. Right. And it's just like kind of annoying. People are like... You say that and they're like, oh, so you get $100,000 a month, it's like, fuck, no, we don't. Yeah. And people like

are so good at just seeing that amount and so bad at being like, oh, well, they have to pay for this. There's just like infinite fucking things. They have to pay for that, yeah. We've got to buy all this Chrome Hearts apparel. That's a big part of it. Yeah. I still haven't on that. Adobe Master's Sweet

subscriptions for every I back in the house. I got a good Krobehart's store story. I was in Miami for a fucking boonk gang versus Supreme Patty boxing match, basically. The pinnacle of modern sporting events. Oh my God. Sad I missed it. You guys not being there. It's almost shocking. Yeah. Anything to be there.

We got shows. I don't know. But we're there and we were with fucking Walter from Fresh and fit. And he goes, like, we're walking by the Kromhart store and AD wants to go in and I'm like, I don't care. I'm just going to stand out here. And then Walter goes and it pays $100. You have to pay money to go into the store.

So he paid for me to go into the store. I walk around the store. I'm like, I'm not going to buy anything. How much does it cost to go inside the Chromeheart store? I think it was like $100. Holy shit. The hats are $1,000. At the end of the day, it's not worth it.

I don't. I didn't see anything in there. Everything in there looks to me like a really lame corporate version of like a banned shirt that I would have bought in 1999. Yeah. I don't even know a Chromehard shit looks. looks like. But did you just get my ID reference or no? No, yeah, I got it.

That's one of my favorite No Jumper hosts. Yeah, he's a funny guy. You guys hang out outside of work? Occasionally. Who's your best friend of all the podcast hosts outside of the studio? Well, I've known Housephone the longest for sure. It is weird, though, because I feel like me and Troll are probably, like, might get along the best and might have the most similar lives because we are just pretty much old, man,

boring guys with businesses who just hang out of their kids. Yeah. I went on your guys Reddit and I was like, goddamn dude, if I was on this podcast, I would not read that shit. I read it religiously. It's like such negative gossip. Yeah, but that stuff doesn't bother me. Really? No, I guess you've been doing it for a while. Yeah, yeah.

I read our Reddit every time someone's like, why are they going to Ukraine? Like, what are they going to make a video about drunk people in Ukraine? Fuck these guys. I'm like, yeah, we're on the flight. We're like, oh, shit, should we go home? Really? Yeah, we're not used to negative feedback. Really?

Yeah. I guess I'm just like way too used to it. Yeah. It doesn't even. Nobody really hates on us. Yeah. They hate on us because the t-shirts for our merch are, they thought they was a medium, but they were just a little too big.

Yeah. Oh, if that's the most hate you're getting, that's awesome. He thinks he's the king of the fucking world. Yeah. My shirt doesn't fit. Fuck these guys. Wow. I'm unsubbing.

Get out of here, man. That's incredible. No, because somebody, I mean, okay, why would Channel 5 be so inoffensive to? to people. I mean, somebody said to me the other day, they're like, oh my God, you're getting interviewed Andrew. He's the funniest dude ever. Yeah. And I was like, okay, I think his videos are super funny, but you really think that's like the best way to describe it is that he's funny? I'm like, I think it's more like he creates a fucking hilarious atmosphere because it's not like you even have said anything close to like a joke in most episodes, right? Basically never.

You're really getting out of the way as much as possible. I have funny conversations and we, you know, we obviously edit and direct all of it. So like, it's a funny composition. You aid the humor. But you are not the comedian. We're pretty funny. Dude, I think. But we're not stand-up comedians, you know. Shout out to stand-up comedian. I could never do that shit. No, I would, yeah. That's so painful to watch.

No, but like, okay, there's a lot of people. I was thinking, and you guys are kind of like the opposite of a prank channel. Yes. The prank channel is like, you go out and you basically do stand-up comedy in front of random people. You guys are the opposite, where you basically, like, go out there and like create a platform for random people. Yeah. Without making it about you at all.

It's the opposite of hood pranks gone wrong. Just walk around the Bronx farting. Yeah. Damn. What was the shopping car one? Oh, cartnarks. Are you familiar with cartnarks? No.

He lives in central Indiana, I think, and he goes to different home depots and Walmarts. And if you don't put your cart back, you know, after you go shopping, you're supposed to go in the cart bay. He has these wands that make, like, noises. And he'll be like, cartnarks. He has a GoPro on his head. And they'll be like, you got to put your cart back. And they'll try to fight him. They'll be like, I can put my cart wherever the fuck I want.

He's like, actually, you can. It's against the rules. You got to put it back in the cart bay. they try to kick him in the nuts, push him over, everything. He emailed us and was like, I want to hang out with you guys. I want to collaborate. And we're like, yes. So next time we're in Indiana, cart and arcs, if you're watching,

I would love to accompany you and you're a vigilante justice. So he does this to make content? Oh, dude, it's the best content ever. So it's like intended to be like a troll, or is this like what he's actually passionate? No, the guy wants people to put carts in the cart bay. He's trying to piss off as many people as possible in like a short amount of time. And he'll have like 12 people screaming at him. I'll have like an entire like Albertson's parking lot just like from all angles.

Yeah, like shrieking at him. He's a power. He's just filming. Yeah. He's a regulator. He's all about law and order. He's a powerful one-man gang, I'd say. Yeah.

But so now you're in a weird position where it's like, it's your job to uncover weird subcultures, right? Yeah. It's fucking weird. So like that, that YouTube video, like I'm hearing the way you're talking about it, like you're so excited about it. And it does sound interesting. I would definitely check it out. But it's like, for me, if I fucking thought it was the funniest thing ever,

I'm probably gonna watch a couple episodes and move on. For you guys, it's like, oh no, this could be the next one. Yeah, absolutely. Like, it's a little different, because if I was you, I would get Lil Cito here and Cartnarks here. And I would try to maintain two lines of conversation.

One about a white man's place in drill music and the other about CART injustice. Right. And just sort of weave those together. Create common ground, perhaps, through food, music, or video games, or whatever. Engineer some kind of collaboration, maybe a song, a drill song about carts.

You guys like the combo stuff. We like to interweave storylines, bend dimensions. The Game of Thrones. And then you end up a crib back at the Slipknot concert. Boom. That was a beautiful thing. What is the long-term goal? How far ahead have you thought about this?

Well, we have like a movie that's like in the works right now. Yeah, you think that might be a game changer? Yeah, definitely. Because, like, you know, it's like an 824 movie. Like, it's a real feature film. And so we're trying to find a distributor for it right now. So right now we're in the process of like finding a distributor so we can make the announcement.

So once that happens, I think that'll take us, at least in the public perception, out of YouTube realm. And I don't think people see us as YouTubers, but to have the validation of a feature film that's in theaters and it's reviewed by critics like Roger Ebert. Yeah, when it runs Roger Ebert talks about it. Well, there's definitely an extent to which you could be the biggest fucking YouTuber in the world

and the mainstream world still doesn't give a fuck about you, right? Like I remember David Dobrick talking about going to Netflix, trying to sell them on a TV show, and they were just like, Yeah, there's a big disconnect. And I understand why, because making a movie takes a long time. Yeah. Especially if there's a bunch of EPs and chefs in the kitchen. Whereas a YouTube video, you can get more streams on a YouTube video than a feature film in theaters in 24 hours.

Yet you don't have the mainstream validation of the people on top, you know. Right. It's just like, but long-term goals is different types of stuff. Like we want to make a cartoon. I want to write another book. Um. Is it about Channel 5 a year? five, the YouTube entity, or is it about just building a media company in general?

Yeah, probably option two. You know, but I don't want to grow so big that we're disconnected from it. Yeah, because it's like to do your content at scale and to still have it be good would be like the ultimate challenge, right? Yeah, and that comes through like not chasing of another viral moment because our previous shows, my previous, my first shows, quarter confessions and our show, All Gas No Breaks was built upon viral internet moments and that's how we built traffic now we don't really have viral moments we just have a large community and fan base that fucks with whatever we do so we don't have to like

engineer these crazy collaborations like we're set on this path for a while so we don't need to grow but I'd like to but I don't need like a skyrocket moment right just grow over time but it's kind of weird once you have a YouTube channel that really starts taking off because you start to think like well I want to do other things with my life yeah am I going to be able to create this into a business where I can consistently be able to keep this channel going, but then also be able to carve out large chunks of my life to be able to work on other things, like when you're saying the book or the movie or whatever, it's like, I'm sure the channel 5, the YouTube channel will, would be its best version of itself if you just said, no, this is

my thing. Mr. Beast. He just said, okay, this is it. This is the whole thing. I'm not trying to go beyond this. Yeah, and he did the Spanish translation channel. I think we're going to do that too, Conal Cinco. So we're actually in the works for it right now.

It's kind of expensive though. How much? I think it's like 500 hour per voice actor. So not only that, but you've got to re-edit everything. Because we've lost most of the files from our videos. So we just have the YouTube MP4. So we would have to download the high quality version of that, re-soundtrack.

It's the whole thing. But I think it's worth it. I feel like any time there's some crazy American shit, other countries watch Channel 5, and they always comment, wow, America's so crazy. That's sort of the extent of a lot of their analysis. So I feel like that would hit pretty hard in Latin America. Yeah.

But what's the goal? Is more people seeing it? Doing shows in Mexico City, that kind of thing. Right. Sounds tight. Like, I also speak pretty good Spanish and, like, I want to travel through that world and have opportunities. Right.

Start covering shit in Latin America, too. Yeah. Expand out of the U.S. We just did our first videos in Canada. So it's like... The trucker convoy thing? No, we did the Calgary Stampede. We covered a guy named Will Blunderfield,

who's a men's second. ex-Kung-Fu coach, you can help you grow your testicles with a special program. And then what else do we do? East Hastings, which is a legalized drug district. Right. Dicriminalized. What ways can you see in which YouTube shapes the content?

What do you mean? Like the incentives of what to make or how to do it or what not to cover, for example. Like how is the platform and the rules that they institute and everything? Like, how has that pushed you in certain directions? Almost not at all, because I look at it just the medium you know it could be anything else also once you get to this

certain level YouTube kind of gives you like a partner to work with so we have this dude at YouTube who we upload videos a day before he manually manually reviews it make sure it's not copyright flagged or whatever are gonna be age restricted so we get everything approved now before it goes online really it gets demonetized which is fine but the age restriction just kills the video oh yeah the worst yeah that just sucks yeah we pretty much cover what we're interested in right I feel like we get more bored by the subject matter like quicker than our audience like our audience could watch like screaming

NASCAR drivers probably for like every day for like a year right we can't hear any screaming yeah like I don't want to cover the same thing twice like we tried it one of my first viral videos was the all gas no breaks Talladega super Speedway video right and we went back again for Channel 5 to do return to Talladega and like dude I just didn't have any fun I'm like, I already did this. I feel like I'm trying to revive some shit that already, you know, had its course. But it's funny because like living your life that way feels like maybe at some point you've just seen everything and you, you know, it's like hard to find something that's really going to stand out to you as new and unique, especially when all these other videos have touched on things that were fairly shocking, you know?

Yeah. Dude, it makes it hard to communicate with new people too. Yeah. Yeah. Being so young and seeing so much like nutty shit. Yeah, because, you know, it's just, even just traveling and generally. Like there's something weird that happens to when you travel a lot and you've seen so much and then you just go back home and you just realize how small a lot of your peers worlds are because it's like, you know, the inter-store drama at the mall where they work is like super fascinating to them. And you're like, fuck, I was just in Ukraine.

Like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Yeah. It's a weird one. For sure, bro. Yeah. Okay. Let me hit the question list. I want to make sure I'm not everything here.

Oh, yeah. Okay. the editor. Yep. When I go back and watch like older All Gas No Break shit, it's kind of crazy. It's kind of trippy because I'm like,

oh my God, they've been on the same camera angle on this guy for like eight seconds. Like this is just so unlike what the shit is like now. How is that transformed and how big of a role do you think that that plays? I mean, we don't do that kind of editing anymore.

Like we don't do crash zooms. We don't do word vomit. We are trying to lean more in like the documentary direction. And that's really an access thing. Because if you make a name for yourself as an ambush interviewer who will jumble people's words up and make them look stupid and put like a circus song behind it. Now that's, you know, over time, they're not going to let you in anything. Right.

You're going to get all your press pass applications denied. You're not going to be able to cover shit. So you have to have certain documentaries or videos that you make to point to you to be like, yo, this is what we want to do, even if it's not. You know, so we made a conscious choice, especially when a lot of copycat pages popped off. We were just like, you know what? Let's give everyone this style. I'm not going to go on Instagram live, yelling about people taking it. Right.

I wasn't the first guy to interview someone on the street. Wasn't the first guy to do a crash zoom. Let's just prioritize making cool shit. What's a crash zoom? Zoom, it's in and it shakes? A crash zoom is just when you go an I movie and you have, or premiere. And then you have it like just crash on their face. And then stop.

At the precise moment when they said something questionable. Right. Yeah. Yeah, so if someone, the moment they say something dumb, basically. Do you ever, like, misrepresent somebody for comedic effect and have it kind of seem fucked up to you after the fact? Not anymore, but my first show, Quarter Confessions, there was definitely a little bit of misrepresentation.

Right. I mean, they were saying it, but we were zooming in on them while they were saying it. Right. Just different. I mean. Yeah, the background music. There's, like, a lot of different ways you could sort of paint a picture. You know, you can very easily sort of, like, the way it happens in politics.

days where people are happy to take their political opponent and take a sentence that they've said and split it in half and remove context to make them sound crazy you know yeah like the more you play into that you know how good are you going to really feel about your content right yeah it's just a limiter you know so nowadays if you if you watch our most recent we haven't done a crash zoom in long time six to eight months and the movie doesn't have crash zooms right we're trying to be taken seriously but still have funny ass shit where are you going to put the movie hopefully HBO Netflix Amazon one of them really You're already in the process of pitching it?

Oh, yeah. Really? It's been done for a while. Wow. It's about the 2020 election. Oh, I thought it was about January 6th. Okay. It is.

It's about that too. Everything. Everything. Yeah. So is this a lot of different footage that you guys have filmed that you've had to keep on the back burner? Oh, my God, dude. Could have been huge if you had dropped it right when it happened. Oh, yeah.

I still think it'll be effective as a sort of like a time capsule. Right. But, man, some of this footage would have, like, broke the Internet if it was dropped at the time we recorded it. But that's the give and take when you're a journalist making the long. long form project you gotta know that it's gonna take time I'm still waiting for something that might make me actually want to feel motivated to like film for a long time on one thing yeah so used to just getting in the booth and just banging these out definitely dude mm-hmm you edit the podcast no there's no

we edit the channel we edit the channel five shit yeah but makes sense because like you're doing like a 15 minute bang it's like every yeah you can afford to get in there and figure out every nuance. For us, it's like, I just do it raw. I always tell people, I'm like, if you're going to get into podcasting, it would probably behoove you to, like, film for an hour and a half and then chop it down to an hour. Yeah.

You know, take out the whack shit. Yeah. But people don't, I don't know. Because it's like, we live in this world where it's just like, people are like, oh, why edit it? It's like, well, if you're trying to get an audience, you might want to edit it. You might want to make it a little bit more palatable. If you come out the gate with a two-hour podcast, it's a lot for people to bite into. Yeah.

I hope you don't have this one too much. No. It's got to come out. This is a good one. No, yeah. Well, you think that I'm not enjoying being pushed on my gangster coverage? No, I like that. I just fuck with, like, the fact that you're done to talk about this kind of thing.

Oh, of course, yeah. Because it's a process of me figuring out everything as well, too. There's definitely stuff I can look back on where I'm like, damn, I would do that differently. Like what? Well, I mean, the one that, like, I can't really, like, act like it was my fault because that all happened live was Boone gang when he came in and passed out. smashes his head on the wall and he's babbling off his ends and it's just like we're a lot so it's like i kind of really oh yeah i couldn't do anything about it he like forced himself into the chair yeah but then like the way it looked afterwards was like oh adam got this guy fucked up and had him

come in here so that he could make a fool out of him for content they think you like preloaded him with like no i was mad i was supposed to interview him and like we had a good interview relationship going at that time and then he just shows up like so fucked up and it was bad it wasn't even like funny because he was out in the parking lot afterwards. I didn't even see it, but I've seen videos of like girls dumping water on his head. Like, I think he might have to go to the hospital. Like, it wasn't funny at all. Well, shout out to John Gabana for turning his life around.

There's hope for everybody. And some people, it's good that they find God. That I would definitely agree with. God, he could use God, yeah. Our homie, Jesus Christ, Mike Servant. Jesus Christ, without God, he'd be a lunatic. Right. A lot of people need God.

I just saw the Bunk and Will Vicky broke up, I think. I didn't even know they were dating. Oh, yeah, they had a whole thing. Wow. They found God together. Imagine you were a kid growing up, the child of those two, just like gradually learning what your parents did. It's like, this is a video of your dad stealing biscuits from Popeyes before you were born.

And here's a video of your mom dissing rice gum in a song saying, Ching Chong, Ching Chong, Ching, bitch. Your mom did not stop aging. That was, she really did that. that was amazing god i couldn't believe it back of the day when that happened oh dude that was such a good internet era boon gang was the greatest single greatest of all time he changed shit a lot imagine your supreme patty and chan gabana is just raining blows upon you did he win the fight yeah okay i mean looking at them in the ring together supreme patty and him

really didn't look like they should have been in the same ring yeah he's a much larger man shout of supreme patty i don't want to shit on your dreams or anything but a Supreme Patty, we wouldn't be here without you. That's real. Yo, man, if Channel 5 had been around a little longer, or Augusta No Breaks, maybe there would have been a Supreme Patty video? Yeah, I was studying how to, you know. This guy squeezes lemons into his eyes.

Oh, dude, that would have been the best era for us. But I was in school learning how to be a newspaper reporter, writing about hoverboards being banned on my campus and Jewel banning Mango. Do you look at what Mr. Beas is doing, and is that motivation? motivate you in some way, even though your content's completely different? Yeah, just like I said, with this Spanish translation shit. There's a singular focus with him that still just consistently blows my fucking mind. He just takes this one thing so serious and is willing to just go so above and beyond.

Yeah. I don't know. I see him as my arch nemesis. Really? Because you guys are like the sort of more other side of the road YouTube channel? Because we're a beast too. We're beast. But, you know, people say it's not for kids.

Yeah, he isn't. In what way is he like a beast? He's not. He's quite unbeast-like. His stats are beast. He does beast numbers and engagement. He beast the algorithm. No, the other day I heard Flacco trying to explain him to Glasses Malone,

who's like a little bit older gangster rapper. And he's like, yeah, he counted to 100,000. Oh, he said Logan Paul 100,000 times. And glasses is like, what? I love Flacco, man. And what relevance does that have to his current output? Remember we walked in before I even met you? Flacco was there and he was like,

Michael B. Jordan definitely has a 10-inch dick. I'm like, this guy. He has this belief that he thinks that like somebody's overall value in life would kind of like determine their penis size. Like if you're a very successful man that you must have a huge dick. Yeah. Which I assure you is just not how this works at all. You think I wonder what he thinks about Jeff Bezos is a like 40 feet long.

I mean he probably really tucks it into his shoes through his pants. Yeah, I mean something like that. Has to get reduction surgery. No, bringing Flacco in here has been a bizarre change to everything going on around here. Certainly has. He's just from another fucking planet, to be totally honest. Did you discover Stripe through soft white underbelly? Yeah.

Somebody hit us up to interview him after he blew up on that. What do you think of them? Softwood Underbell. Mark to mark on the phone, Mark lady, you know, for like a couple hours. It's good. I mean, you know, it's interesting. I mean, yeah, it's totally, it's funny to me, because we started doing content in downtown LA

right on the outskirts of Skid Row and never would have occurred. People just always say as a joke, like, you should interview a random homeless guy. Yeah. And I was like, dude, this shit is sad. I know. I generally like, we have avoided that forever. Yeah.

I mean, in a way, like with the Invisible People series that, you know, went viral that was on, like, Hollywood and Highland and Venice. Like, you're allegedly humanizing the. the subject, the interview subject, you know, because, you know, you're making the suburban world aware of the reality that there's teenage vagrants living homeless on the streets of Hollywood. But in reality, you're making a lot of money off the YouTube videos.

What really made me think of Mark as a good person is him on this podcast explaining just how much money he gave us to these people. Yeah, I really like your interview with him was really good. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, I was really, I feel like what he's doing if it was done by anybody else or by somebody who had a different tone and demeanor would come off as exploitive.

And I've come to realize that that does exist on YouTube, of course. There's a lot of people with just cameras going around parking lots, filming crazy, messed out tweakers. Even giving them 20 bucks. And saying, everyone congratulate me. All the comments are like, oh, blessings. I'm like, man, this is bullshit.

But Mark, like, when I talked to him on the phone, he explained that he's pretty much broke by supporting the people who he has interviewed in the past. He really helps them. Like, some of the stories he told me is, He goes above and beyond to follow the timelines of interview subjects that he feels are valuable and worth giving attention to. And he says he does, I think, five interviews for every interview puts out.

He records a lot of interviews that don't come out and pays those people as well. Yeah, he told me the story he was in Vegas, like, you know, somewhere off Fremont Street, one of those old Vegas hotels, like Golden Nugget or something. And he was trying to interview escorts that were in Vegas. And he said that he did, like, 20 in a row. They'd show up and be like, what do you want? He'd be like an interview. And they would just be like, no.

way. Really? Yeah. So Mark really goes, apparently he's in like West Virginia right now. Right. He's seeking out, you know, people that have been dejected by society or dejected themselves. Right.

I think that he has done it, in my opinion, more ethically than any other person in that lane. But the lane is still up for debate. There's never been a time where I looked at one of those pieces of content and I was like, oh, that's fucked up. Like that, that treated the subject unfairly. Yeah. I really like how transparent he is about the instances where he gets finessell.

or duped by the people he's interviewing. Exotic? Oh my God. That's the- When he confronts her about like lying about using the money that he gave her for the kids and said he went to her apartment and found a bunch of sex toys and shit. And they, he like had to pay her and the pimp a bunch more money to come on camera and tell that part of the story. So I mean, that that's what's interesting is that it's like, I mean clearly this isn't really like, this is being done more as a artistic pursuit because he wanted the resolution to that story on camera for the channel.

I'm assuming you paid them a bunch more than he was going to make off YouTube revenue from that video. I mean, it's interesting that he wants to tell that story so intensely. It's also always interesting to see what blows up on there. Yeah. You know? Because sometimes you'll see stuff, videos that have almost exactly the same titles. And one will be at 100K and one will be at 5 million. And a lot of times you kind of draw like weird conclusions.

Like I kind of notice that if it's like a white drug addict that it's, seems like it gets way more views like people just seem like way more shocked by that yeah the skinhead interview two you did was crazy mm you know the dude like covered in swastika's talking about his experience like Orange County and like to state prison all this shit right never even talked to someone like that yeah but have you thought about it for your channel is that a line you went across like hyper racist shit just super Nazis yeah not really I mean the thing is like with the whole platforming thing right like if we platformed certain

I don't even want to say their names on here, because I will gas them up. But I can think of a couple right-wing fringe fastest organizations that all they want is numbers. They play an optics game now. So even if I were to platform them and make them look stupid or whatever, that'd be a win for them, because it would be like a at the end of the day,

a recruitment tool. Because if someone saw my video and was like, oh, he miscovered them, then boom, they've got another recruit. So when we platform far-right shit, it's typically shit that's already in the public knowledge pool. Q&RUIN on is. started huge by the time you covered it. Alex Jones.

Yeah. Proud boys. Everybody knows what that is. That's household shit. So us covering it is actually increasing awareness about what really happens within those circles. Right. It'd be one thing if we went on a limb to be like, we're in Arkansas at a clan rally with 15 people. Right.

And we're giving them all five minutes of airtime apiece to an audience of two million. Even though they know like 20 people, you know. And a lot of, like, you know, with that most racist town in America video that was an Harris in Arkansas, whatever. I don't know. I don't like any of that racist bait shit on YouTube. You know, it does numbers, but it's whack to me. But I mean, I thought it was interesting just to get the perspective of like, oh, it's hard to find somebody on the street out here who claims to be racist. Like, even though there might be some famous racist from this place, it is interesting to find out the, oh, like the vast majority of people out here are just regular people. Right. But I mean, the tip of the iceberg is the KKK.

You know, if you want to expose racist shit, you should probably, you know, expose it in day-to-day life. life in communities that interact with the actual world of people. You know, it, when you chase the fringe, you're not really doing much journalism in that way. When the fringe is so small in terms of people who actually are like committed out here, have racist groups, you know, even throughout the Trump thing, it's like, the people who are really like forming racist groups, let's just like use that. I mean, it feels like, I remember people like showering Richard Spencer with attention

around the time of Trump got elected and then I never felt like that, like that, That dude has like 30,000 followers or something. Yeah, I think pre-Srollwitzville, pre-2017, when people like Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor were like doing millions of views on YouTube, but that was something worth covering because that was a serious problem. Right. Now, I mean, those groups are so small. You'd be, like, promoting them by even tracking them down and getting their two cents about what's going on.

But the thing is, it would go viral. Yeah. Racist shit just goes viral. I always think about being a kid and how I didn't think it was anything out of the ordinary that I was watching Jerry Springer and that they would have a bunch of skin hair. or a bunch of Klansmen and then like a bunch of random black people and they would just put them on stage together scream at each other attack each other the fucking securities breaking it up I was watching as a kid and it didn't even seem like anything Yeah out of the ordinary and when I think about that now it's like I mean from the perspective of like if a YouTube channel popped up tomorrow that that's what they did

I mean sounds sounds like a million subscriber channel for sure but yeah there's a lot of Ethical issues about doing that kind of thing right? Yeah, it's like if if 20 to 30 million people believe even Q and non conspiracy theories, right? That's a problem. Yeah. Worth covering. Yeah.

You know? But it's not viral. Yeah. And is it just like inherently cruel to like set up the situation? Yeah. Just everybody has an aunt involved in that. What if it's like a debate? Between which type of groups?

Well, I mean like, you know, you put Klansmen and a guy who wants to argue with a Klansman on the same stage together and you make YouTube content out of that? Like to what extent is that unethical? because, I mean, it's a battle of ideas, as they say, right? Marketplace of ideas. Yeah, I've never done something like that, but that does sound pretty entertaining. Yeah.

For sure. But it's like, do you want to be the guy engineering it? You're also not creating panic, you know what I mean? Like, that's clearly an engineered environment if you're in a studio. But if I'm just like, here I am in Arkansas at a cross burning, like, how the fuck did I end up there? Yeah. You went there because you were trying to find a crossburning really fucking bad.

Right. You looked for months. You were trying so hard to find some dark shit. And you finally got there. And you're like, everyone, look. Like everything's fucked up. It's like, yeah, a lot of things aren't fucked up, but like, you know, you try it hard. Is there anything that stands out to you as stuff that you tried that you thought that people were going to love

and then it just didn't work as good as you thought it would? Oh, that's a really good question. What do you think, Nick? Like some shit. Stuff you found fascinating that the people just didn't really take to. Give me one sake of some shit. Definitely have a good answer for this. What's a video that we made that we thought were like, oh, people are going to love this one?

And they ended up just being like a complete flop. I don't know. I know that you probably like the Q&ON conspiracy dad, Kelly Johnson, more than the average viewer does just because you know so much about him. There's a lot of context. Yeah, there's certain characters that I find very interesting that people don't connect with as much that I think should be, like, very important in the Channel 5 lore that kind of gets skipped over. I don't think any video we've done has flopped except for a video called Border Security Expo with all gas, no brakes, which is the worst YouTube video ever created. What will happen? Well, you know, we were on the road.

road we were drinking a lot this particular weekend in San Antonio and the convention was a three-day convention right and it ended at five every day and so we showed up at on Sunday at 4.30 with a 30 minute window to make a video at a border patrol expo while they were taking away the carpets and deconstructing the whole conference okay so it was just us ambushing people with like insanely stupid would you rather questions and then if their answers sucked we would play a trap instrumental take their face and have it like spinning through space and like put them on like futures body type thing. So this was like you had to make a video

out of the footage that you had? Yeah, because we were working for a shitty company. Right. Yeah, so that was like, well, we got to make something. They paid for us to get down here. Right. Did you see the angry feedback from that and did it hurt? No, the fucked up thing is.

They liked it? People liked it, yeah. They love this departure from the classic deadpan style. I was like, oh, thank you. Yeah. I felt like Picasso. Would you advise a young kid who wants to get into media? to take the kind of gig that you had at that time,

or is it better to just go it alone? It's a great question. It depends. Shit. Looking back on it, I don't regret anything. Especially the way that the All Gas No Breaks deal worked at first in terms of doing things, media having control. They weren't too manipulative.

They didn't force me to make any content. They didn't try to get me to stop covering protests in favor of party and college content. So if I were to look back, I'd say, yeah, it was a pretty sweet deal. They give you an RV. They give you $45 grand a year. They pay for your gas, pay for like two meals a day.

You get to fill an RV up with all your best friends and traverse the country for a year and a half. That's a great job. If you had been like a little successful, then you would be looking back at it like, wow, it's amazing that they footed the bill for me to try making content for a while. But then instead you became like very successful at a certain point. I had a viral series called quarter confessions in New Orleans prior to all gas no breaks. They did numbers, but there was no money involved. Like I probably had like five grand from doing it ad rea. for some like phone case company.

Right. So like in my head, I knew that in order to like fulfill my vision of having like a traveling interview road show, I had to get an RV, but I had no money. So I didn't even read the contract. I was like, wait, I get an RV next week. So my dad went and picked it up in Seattle. I flew to Seattle and then boom. You love the RV life?

I did for a while. I still like it sometimes. But I'm saying next week I was at the rate of Area 51. And I was at Burning Man. Then I was in Vegas living off the strip in the RV. Then I was at the Flat Earth Conference. My life just became this crazy cycle of, like, events. Yeah, are you craving normalcy or, like, some kind of daily ritual, or are you, like,

just being out there in the craziness? Morning coffee is pretty good. We rent a spot, like, in L.A. now. Okay. So whenever I'm feeling, like, a little bit crazed, we just come back here and just edit and chill for, like, a week at a time. That's enough for me. And then you'll just find a destination and just head out?

Yeah, like, we're going to the gathering of the juggalo's next week. Nice. Twins conference. You got good access for the gathering of the juggalo's? Yeah. The lyrical lemonade dudes are letting us use one of their press passes. Oh, lyrical lemonade has gathering of the juggerlose press passes. Jake and Cole.

Enough to let you borrow some. Jake and Cole are letting us roll with them and like interview ICP themselves. Wow. They rejected our press pass last year. I'm not sure why. Huh. I've spent a lot of time with those guys at this point. It's very interesting because they're, I mean,

they're not touring as much because they're dealing with health issues and stuff. So they're very much in the sunset part of their career, I guess you could say. Yeah. I mean, you know, what's crazy about the gathering is, that Chris Hansen hosted it last year. Like they have such an insane lineup of people that like make the gathering happen now. It's fucking amazing. I wonder how nuts it is now because dude, there was a point and they made this clear to me too where they were booking like huge rappers, huge metal bands and shit.

And it just got to the point where they were losing fucking money like crazy. You heard of hepatitis lake. That's a lake at the gathering at the juggles? Yeah, with like car batteries and like fish that are so fried from acid that they just have like bones rising to the surface. and it's just full of naked juggalo's. Doesn't the gathering the juggalo sound like something that you did a video about many years ago? Honestly, we didn't want to do the gathering for a while

because it's been so overcovered. Like, since Vice killed it back in the day. Vice did some shit six years ago. I generally were like, I'm like, no, I'm not going to do it. But that's a good point because you guys are kind of like taking the lane of what Vice was at a certain point, don't you think? Yeah. Vice became a little, I mean, they still honestly do make great content a lot of the time.

But the brand has been somewhat muddled, I guess you could say. you guys kind of took a lot of that. Yeah, you know what I think it is, is like, they don't give much props to the people who actually make documentaries for them. It's just a vice documentary. Right.

I think when you remove that individual agency, it doesn't have to be equity, but just like putting someone stamp on it. Like, for example, shout out to Molly Wertheimer. She's a vice documentary filmmaker who made the All Gas No Breaks documentary for Vice. It's got 7 million views.

Everybody loves it. Right. But her name's not even on it. It says, Vice, All Gas, No Breaks. But I see, like, individual director and the DPs who put in like a shit ton of work and followed us around South Dakota for like four days. But a lot of the vice documentaries that I watch do have like a host or like a person who's sort of like leading the narrative. And I would say that it doesn't seem like the audience really gives a fuck that much.

Yeah, but still just having someone's name on it like not just deferring to the greater entity. Like that's what creates a justice league of like sick ass journalists like it used to be. But that's the thing about YouTube too is that it's so much easier to create a following behind a person rather than brand. you know and I'm sure that like a lot of the fact that people love you follows through to them loving the channel 5 brand as a whole but with vice it's like there is no person right it's like everything who owns it is on the stock market think about the heyday advice right you had Shane Smith interviewing general butt naked in Liberia like that was some epic shit you had Thomas Morton going to like underground LSD caverns I'm not Thomas Morton by Hamilton Morris right you had Thomas Morton doing the noisy Shirex series with Chief Keep riding ATVs in the backyard oh it was great that was that was people And they really had like a monopoly on that shit because there were just so few people trying to make that kind of content at that time too. Right, but I don't know. Shout out to Vice. Shout out to Molly and everybody who helped us out.

But it is sort of like the alt legacy media. Yeah. So in our minds, we get a lot of comparisons. And, you know, I want to talk to Shane Smith more about like, because they signed a huge deal. Yeah. You know, I can't imagine. How much did they make?

We can look it up later. But Vice 100 billion. Businesses are governed by incentives. And when I've spoken to the people who work at Vice, like, he had said the structure is all fucked up. Like, they just don't, like, there's no feeling of like, oh, we need to make this content. and it'll do great on the platform

and it would be happy because they're sort of like the whole TV thing and like having to make content for TV and like I remember I went in there at device one time and like there was way less employees and I'm like what's going on? And he's like oh he's like you know that

sexual harassment shit that was in the New York Times and like yeah he's like that pretty much decimated the number of employees here. I'm like so they have this crazy transition from being this wild ass party brand to being like a real business operation and I think they lost a lot along the way. Culture changed a lot too.

You know, it's like, Vice is a pretty liberal publication, you know, and like, that, like, punk now is that. The funniest thing I thought, like, when I used to read the Vice magazine, it would be like, oh, the do's and don'ts. It's literally just ridiculed people for their appearances. You know who wrote those? Who? Gavin McKinness, who went on to Found the Proud Boys. Crazy. But it shows early stage hipsterism, like, what the currents really were.

And I remember around that time period, I remember watching Gavin McGinnis on Joe Rogan, and I remember being, like, A, I cannot fucking believe. this dude is real because he said so many like extreme offensive things that maybe would fit in more normally with like the Matt Gates's of the world and shit these days but he was talking like one of those early Rogan interviews he's he's floating

the idea for the proud boys yeah and it it didn't sound offensive at that time or it didn't sound that offensive it was like it's like a white men's social group yeah and then to see what it turned into it was just like insane there's a lot of non-whites in there too that's true what Cubans yeah I don't think he would have said it was a white social group. I think he was just saying it.

And it was like, oh, it was a chauvinistic men's organization. I think he said. Yeah, definitely. Which I guess it's cool. Which, when it's funny, because, like, no one's seen the movie yet. Right. But, like, we have this massive body of work that centers around, like, right-wing shit. So I know that as soon as that comes out, like, I'm going to get so many questions about this type of shit.

So it's funny talking about it now as, like, a, you know, subplot. Because when I when they have me do these big interviews after the movie comes out like if hopefully if it does like it's gonna be like everything is about proud boys everything's about Alex Jones It runs about this and that but you you'll go to a proud boys rally and you'll make content not again. Oh not again yeah I went once but satirizing them is fun Yeah what's what's the left equivalent of like a proud boys rally like some insane fucking gender theory conference or something like is that is that fair game or is that punching down? We did a video that we thought would be an equivalent. It was at the Uhuru reparations march. Okay, yeah, I watched the...

In Oakland, and if you know, Oakland is the frontier of gentrification for the whole West Coast. Just a bunch of white people feeling bad about being white. It was insane. And he kept asking for everybody for five bucks. Yeah, Saddam did. Shout out to Saddam. Right.

But like, the whole theme was a white solidarity with black power. Right. And they were like marching around in tears, talking about reparations, marching through like the most gentrified corridor of central west Oakland. And then to build a basketball court in St. Louis, which I just visited and is still not built yet. It's still not built. Just a stake in the ground.

A lot of these things that people are supposed to be building don't really seem like they're happening. A lot of go funds me. Well, what's his name, Dr. Umar, who we're trying to do content with. He's been raising money for a school. And if we want to interview them, we have to donate to the school. I guess it's been a long time. So they've been working on the school.

Although I could see how building a school would take a long time. You heard about in like Puerto Rico right now, all like the NFT Bitcoin dudes have like started building these mansions and like haven't been able to pay for the to complete the construction of them since like the NFT Bitcoin shit crashed. So now like there's all these like insanely unfinished like luxurious mansions and shit that like contractors aren't getting paid for. I think we're going to go down there soon to do something about it.

That's smart. Wow. I love that idea. It's nuts because they thought the money was going to keep coming. And so, like, people were building $150 million mansions down there. I'm going to tell you something I haven't said on camera is that right before the crypto crash, there was a company reaching out to me that was really interested in investing an extreme amount of money into basically me and my girl creating a variety of metaverse porn for the company

where basically we'd be doing porn with, like, sensors all over our bodies. I don't fucking know. We're going to have to create a whole green screen room, something crazy like that. And, yeah, this seems extremely stupid. I don't know what you're thinking, but it was enough money that I was like, yeah, all right, I guess I got to do that. I hope I don't have to promote it too much, but yeah, I'll definitely do that. And then the market crashed, and then now I don't have to do that. So people don't have to, like, read about this on my story.

Right. It's better than Chet Hanks's an empty. What was his NFT? All right, so. Chode coin. And it was kind of sick. It was just, like, chodes that are themed, like, one chode will be one of the island boys. Another chode will be like George Bush was type.

Wow. Yeah, dude. But the NFT shit is crazy because, you know, at ComplexCon, that's like the first time I ever engaged with like the NFT crypto community. And they were so sure that this was like the next shit. Yeah. I was walking on the floor. I never forget this. Some dude comes up to me and he's like, hey man, like my friend would like to speak to you.

I'm like, who's your friend? He's like, Gary V. I had no idea who Gary V was. So I was like. At Complexcon? Yeah. So I said, yo, if your friend wants a picture, just tell him to like just come get it. And the dude just walked away.

And the whole time I was like, that was weird. And I went on YouTube and I was like, fuck, I almost talked to the guy. Yeah. What would you have asked him? What is an NFT? How much money do you have? They'll tell you all about Vee friends. Yeah, I mean, he was the kingpin.

I do think that his framework that he's throwing out there for how VFriends could be a success is actually the only thing that makes sense to me, which is basically like, we're going to sell these NFTs so that you can have ownership of this new brand that we're creating. but then you have to go out there into the world and create value for this IP. Now, is that going to work for these penguins and shit that Gary Via's drawn? Yeah. I don't know. But, I mean, if you're going to do an NFT, you have to have some kind of game plan in place in which you're going to be able to create long-term value from this.

Yeah. NFT's always been the same to me. You know what it stands for? Not fucking trying it. You know what Delta stands for? What? Doesn't ever leave terminal. Ah!

But did you think about doing an FD? I know you've been pitched a thousand times. Every time so I knew that would be the downfall of everything. If we made a Channel 5 NFT, there's no way the bag would ever be good enough to undo the damage that would do to our integrity. Yeah. But do you, okay, lyrical lemonade in NFTs.

Yeah, it's different. Yeah? Because they're like about a bag. You're like, you know, it's just a little bit different. But he's done very little that I would consider like about a bad. over the years. He works with Lil Durk, the richest man on earth. Yeah.

But I'm in Little Durk also, like, one of the hottest rappers in the game. Yeah, we don't work with the hottest rappers in the game. We want to. Maybe if I did, I would do that. Right. I just like, I see Lyrical Lemonade within this space of being like a brand that kind of refuses to devalue their brand for the most part. I'm sure that Cole could point the things over the years and be like,

I wish I didn't do that. I wish I didn't do that. But, you know, for the most part, I've seen. But the thing is, but the NFT thing is that if they put it out six months ago, they were probably thinking about it six months before that and like a year ago NFT seemed like maybe this actually is the future and then like as of a couple months ago they've seemed like a fucking joke we really don't know in the long run if if society can figure out utility for them you know I do own a fucking 160,000 dollar crypto punk so

fuck it I'm gonna get my lyrical lemonade video one day mm yeah you've been around coal and stuff right I'm gonna get that and I'm gonna get the Drake future have you reached out of Drake? Nope. I'm not gonna. Sure reach up. That's gonna happen. I'm just gonna sit here and wait for it. Can we talk about graffiti before we live?

A little bit. Dun dun. What was your relationship with graffiti like as a kid? How deep in news you get? I just, you know, just like, you know. Just fucking around? Yeah, yeah. You know some people I know, though,

who take it a little bit more serious. Yeah. We won't say names or anything, but what do you like about your? graffiti what do you find inspirational about it not doing it but just observing it the history he also likes expressing himself through looking at it yeah well what you know what's crazy is one of the reasons I got into college in the first place a lot of people don't know this about me but I actually have the congressional Medal of Honor I got it during the Obama administration

it's signed by Pelosi and John McCain rest of peace and a few others because I was taking a hell pictures of graffiti and putting them on Flickr. And so my mom took my Flickr catalog, printed them into a photo book, and submitted it to the U.S. Congress and said, like, Andrew's, like, documentation of, like, West Coast hip-hop letters. And boom, came back in the mail, signed by Congressional Medal of Honor for Urban Art Photography, submitted that to Loyola University of New Orleans, got a scholarship, full scholarship for journalism. So in that way, without my, keen eye for hip hop art I would never be here

wasn't it like the bronze tier congressional medal of honor they have tears yeah it was actually since Nick wants to clarify there's medals and then there's certificates right I had the bronze certificate which is the sixth lowest tier but hey it's still signed by Congress

that's pretty badass but there was no like hint that like oh well this is all property damage this is all vandalism yeah I think that you know because it was mostly near train lines and stuff. In their mind, it wasn't like a tag on like a, you know, someone's church or something. I grew

up a lot because I, when I was like 14, I was on some graffiti forums. And we had like an amazing train yard where I grew up, like a fuck a load of frets and clean what do they call the plain silver ones or whatever? I don't know. All the wrecks. Yeah.

Dude, it was insane. And it would be like barely ever cops there. And we would go there and paint these terrible pieces when I think about it now. And at one point I basically said that I had this train yard on this forum and a couple different dudes got in touch with me who were from like Loll or like the Boston area. I go to meet up with them. I'm like 14 and I'm meeting up with dudes who are probably like 30.

And they're like drinking 40s. They're smoking blunts. I've never been around somebody smoking a blunt before at that point in my life. They're sick at graffiti. They're so good. And they're just like I'm just hanging out of them for like six, seven, eight hours in a row. I watched a fucking guy who I think it was. K-E-M-S.

I don't fucking know, but did the whole car, a whole fucking thing. He probably used 30 fucking K as a spray pan. I watched him do the whole thing. The fucking railroad cops show up at the last minute and he has to take off and not finish the last 4% of his filling. I know he was dying inside because he didn't get to do it.

Yeah. And those cops are allowed to, like, kill you. Kill you? BNSF and, like, rail yard cops, they call them train bulls. They kind of have, like, bouncer privileges. Wow. Or, like, they can just, like, hit you as hard as they want. Like, they don't have to Miranda you

or anything they could just like beat you with a fucking grow bar or something what has kept you from doing graffiti content on channel 5 it's not that it i mean a little too close to home what do you think what do you think yeah i don't know some maybe because it just should be separate yeah it's not it's ever again become corny and unpeer and that's your job you got to do it one time if you wanted to make fun of some shit like that you could really yeah yeah oh yeah there's a holy shit if you're like if you wanted to make a video about like oh geez versus like young and you can make the funniest shit. Well, when I was hanging on Shoreline and I would hear them tell stories about taking

fucking serious pharmaceuticals and going out and doing graffiti. Yeah. I remember hearing those stories and being like, wow. There's some fucking stories to be told right there because this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Shout out to O TX. Yeah. Not them.

I'm not saying anybody in particular, but I'm saying they were just telling me stories. I'm like, that is the most reckless thing I've ever fucking heard. Yeah, I cannot imagine what it would be like for, like, Rism and young Kobe and OJZ to be off like a thing. phiz pill and like the one-o-one yeah they probably bombed at like 4 p.m. I think the best video we could do would be to document little kids who want to be like the baddest graffiti criminals actually just record them talking to each other about what kind of stuff they were going to do for respect there's a an event I want to cover if I was ever to do a graph

event it would be something called graffiti and beer which is an annual get together in Fresno, California right that is hilarious You have to bring your black book and you have to bring a six-pack and they meet like under a bridge somewhere. Right. Imagine the conversations that take place with the Fresno graffiti youth. I mean, I couldn't even imagine. I would need you to go there and film it so that I could know. Yeah, for sure.

Damn. Are you like a documentary connoisseur at this point? No, I don't watch that much. Nick watches a lot. I just watch Dark Night. Yeah, Andrew watches Batman and, oh, Breaking Bad. Oh, yeah. Rewat.

I also watched that movie Nope. I didn't see that way. Oh, it's so good. Logan Paul said it sucked. Oh, man, he's wrong. But like, I don't know. I don't watch that much shit because I don't want to end up biting other stuff. Right.

I feel like if I watched too many documentary films, I'll start applying their story-telling techniques. But, like, my DMs are all like, watch my music video. Are your DMs all like, hey, I have a friend who's on fentanyl and you should stick a camera in his face? Yeah, it's more like, that's actually the most annoying, okay, I'm sure the most annoying people's, thing people say to you is like, what's up with the interview? Yeah. Most annoying shit I get is like, my neighbor's a tweet. Like here's my address. I was like why would I want to do that interview my neighbor's worse than the Hoff twins yeah He's out of his mind you got to come film this guy go help your neighbor out Jesus Christ that's what you want to do for your neighbor

You're living next to someone was like screaming their head off you're like general Flav's got to pull up like no man yeah the Hopkins are great no they are yeah Yeah, modern Renaissance men for sure oh literally um okay did I have anything else written down here good uh really got to take a piece yeah I think we've kind of we've done what we had to do do here. Give it a sec. Let's close it out. All right, close it out. Here's a good question. Can you think of a video you've made that has changed you? Yeah, all the protest coverage. Really? Minneapolis protest. Yeah. Definitely. Just made it harder for you to ignore what was going on?

Just changed the way I covered everything. Changes the responsibility. I felt like I had for sure. Derek Chauvin trial one. Anything related to that shit. I feel like I was doing something important at that point. definitely beyond the lulls what's the biggest thing you want your fans to take from the content keep an open mind hmm i heard mark about software and everybody he said that the the underlying theme of his channel is the importance of of strong parents in their children's lives yeah that's the biggest underlying theme of all these people who talks to you they all that fucked up family lives

pretty much yeah that is a good theme for him one day i'll have something more uh poetic to say but for now I just shit I don't know Nick what do you think yeah I don't keep an open mind Yeah never commit suicide Keep an open mind Crucial Never commit suicide

Keep an open mind The biggest thing for me that I get from you guys Is be appreciative Of your local culture Even if it's so familiar to you That you're absolutely sick of it It's like this is something to be appreciated That's a good one

Yeah Yeah Go walk around the block Walk around Talk to someone. Yeah. Talk to people. For sure.

Talk to your enemies. Yes. I wish I could quote CripMag right now, but I will not. Never. Free my boy. Free Crip Mag. Definitely. Free Crip Mag.

It'll be out in February, you said. No doubt. And Nick, it was great to meet a fellow 55th Street Soldier. Right on. Thank you. There it is. Thanks for having me. There it is.

Appreciate you guys. Appreciate you, bro. No, John Burke. Coolest podcast to world. Check us on YouTube, TikTok, Patreon, Instagram, all that shit. Like, comment, and subscribe. no drummer.com if you want to support. Maybe I should look at that camera. I don't know.

Appreciate y'all.