One Song - Juice WRLD's "Lucid Dreams"

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

On One Song, we do our best to give flowers to artists we admire, especially those who left us far too soon. On this episode, Diallo and LUXXURY break down Juice WRLD’s monster hit from 2018, “Lucid Dreams.” They dive into what influenced Juice to channel his emotions into his music, how his signature song brought emo rap to the mainstream, and why the song’s lyrics about heartbreak and mental health inspired a younger generation to comprehend their emotions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Luxury. D'allar Riddle. Today's song was one of the most streamed songs of 2018. It peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100. Damn you, Maroon 5 and Cardi B with girls like you for several reasons now. Oh, my.

This song went six times platinum in the streaming era. And more recently, the song has been certified Diamond. That means 10 million times. Like, that's insane. It doesn't happen anymore so much. I can't think of a song that's gone Diamond recently. And the fact that it was like not. number one. The fact that it was like kept from the number one position is crazy. That is

staying power. And on top of all that, the song has been regarded as one of the signature songs in quote emo rap, a genre that successfully moved from the underground to the mainstream in the 2010s. And now it's time to give flowers to an artist who is one of contemporary hip-hop's biggest champions, an artist who made a huge impact before his untimely passing. It's time for one song, and today that song is Lucid Dreams by Juice World. It's to the point why I love and I hate you and I cannot change you, so I must replace you. Easier said than done. I thought you were the one listening to my...

I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ Diallo-Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist Luxury, aka the guy who sometimes whispers... On the internet. If you want to watch one song, if you're feeling crazy, please go to our YouTube channel and watch this full episode. All right, let's start. All right, so before we dive into breaking down lucid dreams,

let's talk about the elephant and the... room. And that is the fact that we have, I know this is a podcast, but we have technically, for those of you watching at home, we have switched chairs. I'm in what is generally Diallo's chair. Diall, you're, you're, yeah, I don't know, I don't really recognize the podcast today. I'm sitting on the other side. And for those of you listening at home, it's purely for technical reasons. I appreciate it. It's not technical. It is vanity that is causing this change. But not vanity from Vanity Six. I have a, yes, Vanity One. And that one is that I have a Zid on my knows that is not fully healed. And again, this is a podcast. So most of you are just listening to me

tell you something you wouldn't have known about my face. But for those of you watching, you will now understand what you have. I don't know why we bother switching sides. Or mentioning it. If you're just going to tell everybody, oh, by the way, there's a huge thing. Now I feel like we're cheating the people out. You know what it is? It's because we have integrity. We're men of integrity. And we're demonstrating that with our brutal honesty, our brutal vulnerability. And speaking of vulnerability, lucid dreams. Perfect segue. Well done. We want to talk a little bit about why we chose this song and we wanted to step out of our comfort zone with Lucid Dreams.

I totally agree. Like we generally pick songs that we think are part of the canon of sort of pop and rock and hip hop and that we personally connect with. There's a lot of criteria. In fact, our selection process is very behind the scenes. There's a lot of work that goes through choosing these special songs that we spend so much time. There are a lot of throne staplers. There are a lot of hurt feelings.

Feelings are hurt. But again, radical vulnerability, radical honesty. We usually get to a conclusion. In this case, we wanted to do something a little bit because we thought that this song was important. Right. I like the fact that you mentioned canon. It's far easier to say, like, this song from 1975 is a classic. This song from 2000 is a classic.

We're talking about a song that's only about six years old. And yet we felt like this one will definitely be seen as a classic. And because it's not 60 or 70 years old, we do not have history and nostalgia to lean on. Like, we're going to tackle current songs, contemporary songs, and try to write history in real time. And we also really wanted to talk about Gen Z and how they have come, you know, into their own and taken this culture an exciting new way. Yeah, this is a song that connects with a lot of younger people, like people in their early 20s who were teens at the time. Yeah. And we feel like that's important to like understand ourselves.

A lot of discovery happened individually for Diallo and myself preparing for the episode. We learned a lot. And we're going to share that with you today. Absolutely. I think one theme we're going to hit a couple of times is this idea of growing older, which everybody has to do. That's the best case in here.

Yeah, that's the best case in here. And wanting to stay connected to new music. I think your perspective on music changes, just like your perspective on the world changes. And look, we're going to talk about the other elephant in the room. Juice World, he died very young. And I think when an artist dies when you're 21, it hits you differently if you're 21.

You're just like, oh, man, that's a crazy story. Life is short. and you may see their cause of death as like a personal warning of things not to do. But when you get older and we're both parents, like I feel like there's like a parental Rubicon you cross at some point and you only take on like concern. Right. Right. Yeah, we had, I think both that sort of like either a parental or older brother kind of feeling

towards Juice World, towards Jared as we're investigating his story. And it's a very poignant one. And it obviously connected with millions of people. Millions of people, including our kids. I'll say that my kids, like, they listen to X, X, X, X, X, X, Tintacion, they listen to Juice World. And as a parent, you're like, look, I absolutely get it. Like, I think Juice World, you know, he's writing great songs.

He's, you know, arguably a genius. But do I want to expose my kids to music that has these lyrics? And, you know, like, what is the effect that the music's going to have on my kids? But this is a perennial thing, and that's so interesting is to be that next level in age, where what's connecting kids now with this music is what connected us to music at the time. It's always about emotion. It's always about a connection to the artist and the emotion.

And relatability. And relatability. And sometimes from the outside, if there's a sound that's not something you're used to listen to, it may be inscrutable. It may be hard to find your way in. Like, what is it about what's happening? The lyrics may be hard to understand, et cetera.

So part of what we're going to hopefully do today is breakdown what is in this song, the content, the emotional resonance, It's connection to mid-80s, like punk rock, for example. There's a lot going on in the mix there. And it's connection to, you know, the music of future in the 20 teens. And their influences are not the influences of rappers who were my age. And I think we want to start off there.

Can you talk to us a little bit about the rock and emo influences? And maybe even, if you're feeling up to it, the origins of the word emo. Absolutely. Look, so emo core, emo rap, the word emo, where does it come from? It's one of those words. like any genre word, like even the word punk. It kind of has generational or even decade to decade, the meaning shifts and changes. But for me personally, I grew up where the word emo was very specifically coming out of the Discord Washington, D.C., punk rock slash post-punk scene of the mid-80s.

Technically, punk rock is a very short-lived period of time, but like its ethos continues on. And in Washington, D.C., it's got a very specific ethos. We've got bands like minor threat that become Fugazi. So just backing up one more step, punk rock. comes out of, you know, you can take it all the way back to Iggy and the MC5, but at a certain point, in the 1970s, 677 zone, we have the sex pistols, really making it a term that the world knows about. And early punk rock, and most of punk rock for quite a while, is generally angry, fast, loud, it's about politics, up yours, Thatcher kind of vibes. And there's a lot of anger and angst, but there isn't necessarily a lot of vulnerability, a lot of emotional realness. That's a little bit

where this emo word comes into play because suddenly lyrically, the same sounds, the same loud, fast, aggressive music with guitars, mostly but not exclusively made by white people, but I'll get into that in the second, is being merged with a new type of lyricism, which is more about feelings, which is more about angst and anger and emotion, not just anger. And what role does Fugazi play in this? Well, so, Guy, before he's in Fugazi, writes of spring being his band, and they're frequently thought of as the beginnings of emo. But he hates that term. And I found this great quote where he's like,

look, the reason why I think that term is so stupid is that, like, what, like bad brains weren't emotional? Bad brains being one of the greatest bands of all time, but a black DC punk rock band. And his point is like, look, emotion is there in all of this stuff. It's probably just a specific type of revelational, maybe personal lyric. I understand it's one of those things that's hard to put your finger on,

but you kind of know when you hear it. Can I admit? I consider myself a music nerd. And I've seen a million T-shirts with that name. I don't know that I have ever, I can't identify a Fugazi song. Well, this is one of their biggest ones. This is, like, I'll never forget. Like, I've seen Fugazi many times, but my most seminal show is when Bikini Kill is when Bikini Kill is when Bikini Kiel is the one that everyone's on the same team. This song is the one that everyone is everyone. in the room, we'll shout every lyric to. It's Waiting Room by Fugazi. Everybody's moving. Everybody's moving. Ever! I get so hampsed by that shit. That is teenage angst slash pleasure for so many people. So this genre, this emo idea continues on, there's different waves. I mean, technically,

Black Flag and Husker Do might be considered emo. They might not be. You know, all these definitional stuff, you can absolutely start aflame war with any of these bands in any of these words, but like, Weezer technically, Sunny Day real estate, certainly by the time we get to the, like, 2000's pop-pump moment, emo is like, certainly, it is right there in the DNA of a Blink 182. It's right there in a fallout boy. It's like proudly on their sleeves that they would say, we are emo, you know, we come out of this tradition of emo. And so that's kind of leads us into Juice World. And like you said, he died at the age of 21. So, like, he was a kid when my chemical romance and dashboard, like these groups are big.

Yeah. So that makes a lot of sense. Can you tell me a little bit about how he got into emo in the first place? Well, you're exactly right. I mean, that would have been on the radio. And the legend is that he got into emo in fifth grade or so

because he had a crush on an emo girl. So in order to impress, as the story goes, he started listening to bands. She liked, and that included panic at the disco and Paramore. So that's how it gets into his system. But he's already been raised, apparently, his mom.

We're going to get into this a little more specifically later, but his mom wouldn't let him listen to hip-hop. but she was listening to like Billy Idol and like all these sort of random other rock acts so all of that is in the mix for him. Let's describe for some of our listeners who may not follow contemporary rap as closely as the rap of their day or

even the music of their day and talk about where emo rap comes from, especially since Juice World is now considered like sort of a leading figure in the emo rap and SoundCloud rap era. What exactly is emo rap? I mean I think that it clearly fuses like you know the trap beats that were coming out

of Atlanta and just sort of like expanding throughout all the hip hop in the 20 teens. They call it mobile rap, but like there's clearly a future influence I feel like in all these rappers in there. And then just talking about their delivery. Because there is some rapping, but there's a lot of singing. Sometimes I would argue there's not any traditional, what we would traditionally call rapping, you know, on the song. Certainly this song is all singing. It's all melody. That's kind of true. Melody, melody, melody. Lyrically, absolutely. And lyrically, I also think there are themes that play here that you don't typically hear in hip-hop. Because these lyrics focus on subjects like heartbreak, depression, loneliness, anxiety, you know, drug use.

Sleep paralysis? It's like literally a song about sleep paralysis. It literally sounds like someone's singing the potential side effects of that drug on that commercial. Yeah. There's a lot of self-medication going on here. Can you describe a little bit to us about emo rap sound? What struck me as I was listening back on kind of my musicalogical ears, especially in the stems, is like with music in general, there's always the ability to separate these component parts, as we literally do on the show. But in this case, if you were to just take the top line, if you were to just take juice worlds, melody and lyrics, and swap out the middle part, which is all the harmonic content, the chords and the sounds that are melodies and harmonies. And on the bottom is the beats, right?

So if you just have those three basic layers, I keep picturing this, like, those sort of children's books where it's like a puppy head and then you flip the middle and it's like a doctor body. And then like it's, you know, whatever, clown feet. You can sort of have different mix and match. It's like that with music. And we heard this really fun Anderson Pack cover. Well, I was going to bring that up. It perfectly demonstrates the connection between emo rock and emo rap. And do you want to take it away? Well, yeah, I was going to say, when I first heard Lucid Dreams, I was like, this is not hip-hop. This is an emo song. And I couldn't quite put my finger on what made it emo. But Anderson Park had a podcast back then, and he nailed it. He said that Lucid Dreams lyrically was a Blink 182 song. And then him and his group, the Free Nationals, they did their own version of Lucid Dreams.

I think he knocked it out of the park. take back the love that I gave you instead of the point where we replace you that just demonstrates our point. The top part like they've sped it up slightly but basically that's double time on the 84 it might be like slightly faster. Sounds like Travis Barker on the drums. When they got in the half time

that's almost a boom da da da da that's the 84 BPM original proving the point. There's always but for the record the connection is there. This is one of the reasons why I was so excited to talk about this song because to me like there's always been sort of like a connected tissue

between emo and goth and hip hop. People who listen to the show know that I once threw a party called Sad and Bougy, where all we did was play hip hop and goth songs. You know, like, there's an emphasis on clothing, and there's a certain bit of alienation that runs through both those things. And again, I think that when you hear that Edisipog version, you're just like, oh, yeah, like, I hear it. I hear that connected tissue.

And he was going to do a Blink 182 collab. Blink 182 are on record, many interviews saying, yeah, we did a collab, which I think was both of their collective dream was to work together. Juice wanted to work with Blink as much as Blink wanted to work with Juice. I wasn't able to find any recordings that made it outside the studio, but that connection makes so much sense. And Juice actually literally has a song, which is unreleased. It's on SoundCloud. I think someone must have ripped it and put it up there, but he has a song called Blink 182. Where did the term email rap actually come from?

Well, as with any term, who knows the real truth? But in an interview with undergroundhiphop.com, slug from Atmosphere claims he coined emo rap back in 1997. His underground rap focused also on weaknesses and faults and failed relationships. This type of emotional rap was in contrast to what was popular in the early 2000s. I mean, we're talking 50 Cent, Ti, Lill Wayne. It was also different from mainstream artists like Missy Elliott, T. Payne, Farrell. So emo rap kind of appealed to

kids who came of age during the time of fallout boy, My Chemical Romance, and of course, dashboard confessional. A lot of these kids weren't into mainstream rap either because they weren't feeling it or, and this is funny, because they were literally not allowed to listen to rap.

Look, by the late 2000s, you've got Kanye on 808s and Heartbreak. You've got Kid Cutty. Most of all, Drake, all of these artists are moving towards a more emotional and vulnerable rap. And as a result, singing in rap no longer frowned upon.

I feel like, you know, when most deaf was doing it, when Lauren Hill was doing it, there was like the sense of like, are they a rapper? Are they a singer? But like by this point, it's completely accepted. And you know, it should be pointed out, and this is kind of punk rock. I'm just making this connection in real time. The use of autotune, because Kanye kind of changes the game. Like it is before there's T-Payor.

Sure. But like, and there's share before that. There's auto-tune as a corrective tool for pitch becomes an effect. Kind of like you're putting distortion on the guitar. You're not intending to trick anybody. You are enabling, if you weren't melodically inclined, to be melodically inclined as a singer, if you're not naturally a singer.

But also, the sound of it becomes meaningful, becomes significant, it becomes a signifier. Yeah. I mean, I've always said, T-Pain is one of the best singers that's out there. It became a choice. It became hip-hop's, I've never heard that before. I'm going to give you props to my man. It is hip-hop's feedback. You know what I mean?

Like, it's a way to make your voice sound otherworldly. It's a choice. And I think that once Kanye's doing it a lot and Travis Scott's doing a lot, like you get a lot of people using it. Then it becomes part of a lineage where you doing it connects you to the people that did it before. And it all becomes part of this growing genre, these growing connections with these other artists that you feel a kinship with.

And it is also functionally, this isn't just a production thing for the end of the line when it's almost ready to go to be heard by the people. In the process of writing, it is faster. And that's super relevant to Juice World, who is incredibly big part of this story, big part of the show today is about the spanishable.

is about the speed with which they wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote all day, all night, writing, writing, writing. And you can take your mind off of the perfection of what you're doing when you're using Autotune as a creative tool. Absolutely. I think it's really an important thing to mention. It's also easier to take the pressure off of being perfect when you're in your late teens and 20s.

That's a good point. That's one of the functions. With cameras on you and being watched nonstop, there's so much pressure there. But one thing that I want to bring up, you know, and he's not known for using Autotune, but I think lyrically you can't talk about him. rap. What about the weekend? The first time I heard the weekend, I was sort of blown away. You know, I was like, you know, I knew nothing about him, but I heard his song, House of Balloons,

glass table girls. Like, I was in New York sitting at my desk at late night with Jimmy Fallon, where I was a writer, and I was just listening to my hypebeast top 10, as I was known to do back then. And I heard it and I was amazed because I was like, you know, this is a emo hip-hop hipster. I already knew that I was older than him, but I felt like it was time for, like, it was time for like guys like me to sort of like be pushed to the forefront. So I felt a certain kinship. And I was also like I said, blown away by the fact that he had sampled one of my favorite Susie in the Banshee's song. For those who don't know, the song he samples in that song is their 1980 single, Happy House. We could definitely do a Susie deep dive. But let's get back

to this. You've got the weekend. You've got Kanye. You've got Drake. Everybody's making it cool and also commercially viable to be emotional and vulnerable on your tracks. And by 2017, you've got all these independent artists. And they're posting their songs to SoundCloud. Yeah, it's the SoundCloud era. The SoundCloud era is in full effect. And emo rap really makes a lot of this era. I mean, like, this is when you get, you know,

sort of the breakouts of several artists who can be, even if they're not thought of as emo rappers, they're thought of as people who have emo rap in their catalog. And by the way, just because we mentioned SoundCloud, is there a distinction that you can help draw between like a SoundCloud rapper versus someone who just uses SoundCloud's distribution platform? Well, I think that nowadays, SoundCloud rapper is a pejorative to say that you don't have enough of a following or you don't have the songs, you know, quite to get signed. And they don't have quite the safeguards for permissions and, you know, copyright stuff is, yeah, is not quite there, especially in that era. Because South Cloud is technically supposed to be promotional.

Right. So you could literally sample the Beatles and wrap over the Beatles and you might be able to get away. Right. But the reason why this is so powerful in this era is because, you're, because, if you don't have a label behind you, if you're a brand new artist, you can immediately post anything you make and it can be a hit, it can be a miss,

but overnight you have complete control over it. And it's a platform that people are constantly kind of circulating, listening to stuff, listening to Newsef, very open-minded. If you're the SoundCloud kind of listener mindset is also important.

People are really open-minded about like, I've never heard of this before, but what does it sound like? Listen, we're talking about getting older and trying to stay up on what's in music. And look, it was easy when everything was on the radio or MTV or heaven-for-beard. on, you know, TRL or something like that.

But at the end of the day, at some point at the end of the 2000s, it became about the peak mixtape era. And everything was like on media fire and all these like, you basically downloaded a mixtape. The blowouts the blog house stuff. Yeah, nothing, no samples were cleared, but you got a sense of who the artist was, who the rapper was. Look, my friend, I can't, we can't talk about SoundCloud and not talk about me

because SoundCloud is how I posted my illegal edits at the time. There you go. That got me into the hot water that led to my DJ career. I wasn't able to post that My friend, you would not have been You were forged in hot water I was forced But all I wanted to say was that we went out of that mix tape

That it's funny that we still call it mix tape Because like there were no There were no cassettes harmed in that era I think it's cool to call it a mixtape There were no cassettes hard-ish long mix Right We went from that into the SoundCloud era And out of the SoundCloud era

We get a lot of emo rappers We get suicide boys We get Little Peep We get Triple X Tintacion And yes, we get Juice World. By the way, I have to point out it is tragic that I just named four major artists in this genre, and three of them are deceased.

So happily, we still have the suicide boys. Before we go on any further, I want to play a snippet of a seminal emo rap song. This one is from the late XXXTentacion, and you may have heard it. This one is called Sad. I mean, like, you can obviously realize where if you are a teen going through all these changes, emotional or otherwise, where a song like that's going to really speak out to you.

Yeah. Emo rap is a very volatile scene. I mean, like one of its big purveyors, low peep, he dies of a fentanyl overdose on his tour bus in 2017. But that doesn't stop the genre from exploding in popularity. In fact, Emo rap was the fastest growing music genre of any kind on Spotify by 2018. and that's when Juice World really started to break through. He releases Lucid Dreams on his first EP, which is 999 in June of 2017 on SoundCloud,

and by 2018, he had made some big moves, and he was able to release his debut album, Goodbye and Good Riddens. There's something really chilling about that title, and of course, you know, when you go back and listen to his old songs and even lyrics of this song, all kinds of what you hope aren't, like, quote-unquote, clues, but many, many references to dying young,

many references to I make it past 21 is literally a lyric Yeah 27 Club he mentions Like just the idea of like dying You know musicians that die young The Kurt Cobain's the Jimmy Hendrix is Right

He's obviously on his mind And he's obviously dealing with a lot of anxiety And a lot of issues Yeah it's just really chilling Just the title of that album I know that's chilling You can't look past it And it's not like when Pock was always like

It's the kill me tonight You know like This is like more of an internal struggle than an external one. His debut album had other huge, huge hits. It has wasted. It has robbery. It also has one of the first songs

that I heard from, which is, all girls are the same. I love that track. That track goes hard. Alas, Lucid Dreams was the song that put him on the map. And I will say as a casual listener, look, I thought it was more of an emo song

than a hip-hop song. And radio agree. That's right. Lucid Dreams was a crossover hit that also hit the top 10 on Billboard's radio songs and pop songs chart, which was rare at the time because most emo rap songs by, like, Louis Ivert and L'O Pump and Trippie Red, they blew up on streaming platforms,

but they were not getting a lot of play on top 40, which is nuts. So at this time, he's blowing up, big-time rappers start to respect him. They're like, where did this genius kid come from? Where did he come from, luxury? Let's talk a little bit about Jared Higgins, born in Chicago, and grew up in the suburbs. parents are divorced when he's three, so he grows up with his mother and older brother, a single parent home.

His father actually dies just six months before he does. Wow. And apparently his mother is really religious, as we alluded to. She didn't let him listen to rap. But she did let him listen to Rock, which is... Which is so ironic. I get it. You're raising this black boy on the south side of Chicago.

You're like, I'm not going to let you listen to that rap. And so what does he listen to instead? Well, you know, Black Sabbath. Blink and fallout boy, like we mentioned, but there's Billy Idol in the mix. It's so funny to me. Megadeth. It's rock music, basically. It's rock music made by white guys. And a lot of it, some of it is emo and some of it is not, because Black Sabbath. Yeah. There's a lot of, like, to be fair, I'm going through changes. Black Sabbath does have, Ozzy has his emo moments, let's face it. But there's also, you know, Black Sabbath. There's also, like, Generals gathered in the masses. That's a political

song. And by the way, the Aussie connection's a real one, because melodically speaking, I hear a lot of Ozzy filtering into the emo stuff through the Fallout Boy era and then into, because they're very simple melodies. Well, I'm going to take it a step further. I think that Ozzy was on the radar of Juice World's Generation because he was on that reality show. And they were watching, they were watching the Osbournes on reality too. That's one of the, and they probably thought that was funny. And then they were like, let me check out his music. Yeah. And I think that that's 100% related.

But I defy anyone to listen, who's a Sabbath fan, to not listen to that back-to-back with lucid dreams and be like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Those are all like really, those melodies are really close together. They're very simple. They're very repetitive. They're not, like, you know, extremely technically difficult to hit. Yeah. And there's definitely a through line through all this stuff, I think, from Black Sabbath through Fall Out Boy and into Juice World.

But there's also, let's rip the bandaid off. There's also a lot of, like, you know, you know, drug, drug imagery that comes with that music and a lot of those songs. And so the irony is that she's... It's so cute with Ozzy. Sweet Leaf is about marijuana. I love you.

He's like a love letter to smoking pot. But you know, I mean, like, Jews World's mother is like, I don't want you having the bad influence of hip-hop. You can listen to anything else. He's listening to this. Yeah. And then before you know it, like, I'm, again, as a parent, I'm shocked.

He's, like, doing drugs by, like, the age of seven and eight. And hardcore. and all the time. Yeah, it's really sad. Juice World may have taken a lot of drugs, but he was a genius. And his musical journey starts really early. Yeah, no, he's playing piano his whole life. He has musical chops. Like he taught himself to play guitar.

And clearly, the main thing, his lyrical and melodic prowess, that's the freestyle. That freestyle and that doc? I was just like, holy shit. It's not a stop. I feel like that's his brain 24-7. That may be part of why he's medicating because he just has ideas all the time. He's incredibly creative human. And his friends are like, dude, you got talent here.

So as early as the ninth grade, he's on SoundCloud, and he adopts the name Juice the Kid. He was called Juice the Kid because he really liked the Tupac role in the movie Juice. He dropped the kid and became Juice World because he really wanted to be taken over the world. And he did. I mean, like when you think about it in such a short period of time, he goes from this kid in Chicago to like playing these massive sold-out crowds with this punk rock emo energy. And he did. He took over the world. then almost as soon as it began, it was over.

On December 8th... The whole thing is less than two years. I know, it's crazy. Less than two years. It really is. On December 8, 2019, he died of an accidental overdose on a plane, on a tarmac at Midway Airport in Chicago. It was a tragic, tragic loss of life.

But it was a life. It was a life lived, and it's a life that has left us with lots of great songs, including the one that we're talking about today. So after the break, we will dive into lucid dreams. We will dive into how it was... made, and we will dive into the controversy over the song that they chose to sample. Maybe it's an interpolation. We'll find out.

After the break. Welcome back to one song. Luxury, walk us through it. Tell us, how did this song get made? Okay, let's talk about lucid dreams. Sometimes you get stems, and there's file names that make sense. Like, they literally track to what you're listening to, like high hats or bass lines. There's a stem called guitar.

There's a stem called guitar. Let's be fair. Let's be fair. There's also a stem, and I can't quite put my finger around. This one is called Jewish. FX? I don't know what it is. I listen to this one. And I got to say, I listened to the stem. I heard nothing. I heard not one sound. Oh, well, I heard something, but there's nothing Jewish about this to me. We're going about the stems out of order, but I think it's more fun that way. But this is Jewish FX, apparently. Why is that Jewish? I almost don't want to answer that question. I'm definitely not going to answer that question. Yeah, that's it. So we've just been told by our producer that. Our producer just chimed in with an answer. That sound is actually the next tail chirp. That's the NICTurb. I love that.

But in the files, it's called Jewish FX. So I don't know. I mean, it could have been, I thought it was like a fire alarm chirp, too. It could also have been a fire alarm chirp. I don't know. Now that you didn't say it. Yeah.

I recognize it. I don't know why it's called that. Maybe we should move on. We are never going to know the answer. Maybe we don't want to know the answer. But you know what? If you guys know the answer, leave it in the comments. We're always reading them.

Well, let's back up. You asked about the 808s. Yeah, the 808. It's called Freeman 808. Nick Mera. is the producer, and part of the song's story involves his starting with the beat. Just a little bit of facts about him. He himself was also just a teenager at the time.

He was 17 years old. Virtual child. 17 years old. The very talented child. Very talented child from Richmond, Virginia. So first of all, producer Nick Mura is making his track in Frutie Loops Pro, FLP. And I did find something somewhere. I'm pretty sure one of the beat packs he's using comes from Sidepiece.

and that's one of the partners in internet money. So it's another producer cranking out sample packs, just like you might find on Splice these days. You might find the luxury, dusty disco discovery sample pack. Just as an example, like I've done this, where you create about 100 sounds,

and then there's kick drums that are isolated, snare drums, claps. Sometimes you make it so that they're all together in a loop, so you have a full kick snare loop that is instantly usable. That's what he's using. It's possible that those names came from side pieces, naming. That would make sense if it was. That would kind of make sense. And maybe that's where the

Freeman comes from. But I can tell you this. The 808 acts as both a kick drum and the entirety of the baseline. In fact, it's the only bass content of the song. Yeah. And it sounds really cool. Let's listen. And then we'll build up the full beat. I like when that little octave happens there. Boom, boom. No, seriously. It takes me back to the DJ Magic Mike days of like, I call it like Miami booty shake, but like, that bass music from that time was always just tonal bass, hitting you. That's the baseline. I love it. The baselines of so many songs from that era and the electro stuff is, the bass is in the kick drum just being tuned.

Yeah. So you tune it up to the note of the root of the chord you're trying to, you're working with. It was always the sound of somebody's older brother coming to pick them up in middle school. That was the sound you heard coming out of there. You'd hear it like five blocks away. Oh, yeah. Coming towards you. And it was like shaking that Honda chord. Taking the whole neighborhood.

But that was the sound that you hear. There's like a buzz at the window. Totally. Or the mirror. So that's the bass and the kick drum. And let's build up some of the other percussion elements. Starting with the snare. A little syncopation on the snare.

And then the hi-hats come in. Yeah, it's just a little percussion. It reminds me a lot of massive attack, of teardrop. Remember when we broke down the stems? Yeah. I had those little sounds in the mix kind of like that. Yeah. You're like, oh, I didn't even notice that.

There's a couple more of those. This one is called error impact. And this one is called pill. I'll just play them isolated, then I'll play them in the whole B's. You hear it together. That's it. Just little... Bip.

And together in the mix, with everything together, you will now hear the error impact, the Jewish, and the pill. Just adds a little variety across the eight-bar loop. And that's the beat. That is the beat. That is the beat, my friend. Listen to these stems. I also really like the guitar part.

I like the isolated guitar on Lucid Dreams. And you know what's cool is that this is not actually a guitar. And I'll explain that to you in a second. What? Let's listen to this. It's called guitar. Even though the file says guitar. And you can even hear what sounds like fingers on a string

because it's sampled from a person performing all the notes on a guitar. But it is a VST. It is a plug-in. And what producer Nick Mirra has done is he's gone into Fruitiloup Studio. he has found the notes painstakingly of these arpeggios from this guitar, you know, this guitar line that Dominic Miller has written. But they're not sampling it. He's recreating it one note at a time and then using MIDI to...

When you say recreating it one at a time, is he using a guitar? Is he using his... He's using what's called piano roll in any DAW like Ableton Live or Frutty Loop Studio in this case. You can essentially draw in the notes one out of... a time. Sort of by trial and error, you can move it up one note at a time. Is it this? Dun, is it this? And it takes him a good 15 minutes to do it, which is, seems very fast and it is, but as he tells the story, it's painstaking. It's like, I've got to find the exact note. But what's incredible is that when you hear it played back, it just sounds like a performer.

And I actually found the same patch that Nick uses, and I can play it for you just to prove that even though it sounds like a guitar player. Because they have sampled a guitar player playing, But then it's so interesting, right? It's a sample, but then it turns into an interpolation. Yeah. It gets the many layers going here. That guitar player who played it wasn't in the studio with them. Wasn't in the studio.

But here is the sound of a nylon guitar in MIDI, which I'm just playing right here in the room. Like you have all of the elements that an actual guitar play would have, like, in terms of the velocity in terms of the dynamics. But now what if I want to hear more fingers moving down to the string? Yeah. Here's an example of that. I mean, to those listening and not watching us on you. YouTube. There are no guitars here. It's just how hard you hit the key.

Wow. And it just sounds like someone doing a pull-off. That's pretty. It's going from one note to the next one. But that's all MIDI. That's all, and that's what Nick Mira did when he produced the song, and that's why it sounds like a real guitar. And by the way, one fun thing you can do with that,

just for the hell of it, is like you can change the sound. That was nylon guitar. Well, what about rock guitar? You can go, like, that's also me playing. my MIDI keyboard, and I just changed the sound. And by the way, listeners don't know this. He just did that for 30 minutes, and we just shaved it down to the best set. It was very enjoyable.

I got a lot of pleasure out of doing that. Thank you for tolerating it. So now that we know that that's not a guitar, and I thought it was, but I want to talk about the Omnisphere stem, and is that just a synth? What is that? So Omnisphere is the name of a synth, yep. It's a VST, and it's a great synth. It's one of my favorites.

It's by Spectrosonics, who are just a manufacturer of synths. I have their trilogy. Almost all the bass I ever use when I make songs comes from that program. And here's what the Omnisphere track sounds like isolated. And that's the little break. So he's added a lot of maybe reverb, a little delay. And this is also happening, which is Keyescape, is the name of the track. And just an interesting kind of note is that, you know, once you have figured out the part you want in this.

case, once he got the piano roll and figured out the notes to the guitar line, you can apply that to other instruments, which is what he's done here, to layer it and give it some variety. As long as you get it right, the first time, the copies will hit the right notes. You just copy and paste to a new track, and you've got a few of them. He's got one more in the mix here from Contact. How helpful that the names of the tracks are clearly the program to use to make them. I like this one. Like, Contact Five, I think, is the Stip you're talking about. This one seems like it could be made into an entirely different song. Yep. But it's following the same chord changes and it's just doing a little arpeggiated synthy thing and I'll play it for you

with some of those other ones you can hear it in the mix. And it's there during the whole song. It's just like kind of a subtle thing that adds to the overall feeling. I really like it. The melancholy feeling. So that's everything that's going on in the track. I mean, you mentioned the word melancholy. It would not be a melancholy song without these amazing vocals. Can you play me some Jared Higgins, aka Juice World? I still see your shadows in my room. Can't take back the love. that I gave you is to the point why I love and I hate you and I cannot change you so I must replace you so packed with so much yes I will say this um these lyrics that he's singing um he's singing them

obviously yeah I have to say that I almost felt like he was singing the words his girlfriend would sing to him upon his passing does that make sense like I know it's such a search processing that, that's heavy. It's like such a... It blew my own mind. I was like, oh, shit. He's singing as his girlfriend. Oh, my God, that's really haunting.

And then if you think of it that way... I still see the shadows in my room. Yes, can't take back to love. It's to the point where I love. And I hate you. Emotion that you feel when you feels like somebody didn't do enough to stay here. I'm speech...

I love that analysis. I think that's really... And by the way, Panza Juice World might be like, yo, bra, you weigh off or whatever. No, no, I'm going to support that. No one knows more than anyone else what was in Jared Higgins' mind as he's doing that. That seems very plausible.

And all art is obviously open to the interpretation of the people who, you know, take in the art. But that was something that I took away, and all the times I'd ever heard this song, I really did think that, like, you know, he might be singing in the voice of his girlfriend. And it brings me back to the title of the song, which is lucid dreams. And for those who don't know, a lucid dream is when you're dreaming and you realize that you're dreaming. so then you take control of the dream and kind of do whatever you want to do. I know I have a lot of dreams. They're very vivid.

And I definitely have lucid dreams. And I will say more than any VR game I've ever played, like when you realize that you're dreaming, you can do anything in the dream, oh, it's amazing. It's one of my favorite things that happens, you know, at sleep time. And it doesn't, you know, I hear that you can actually, you know,

you can train your brain to do this. But I just think that if you bear with me, If you think of life itself as a lucid dream that Jews World became aware of that he was dreaming, you can not make the argument that he took control of the dream. Right. And then he took control of the characters and the plot. There's so many thoughts on what you're saying.

I'm getting kind of choked up. And he took control. And he gave it an ending that we don't like. We don't understand it. But maybe he gave it the ending that he wanted. So it's part of why we're just keep going back to what I think, Diela and I. But he talks a lot about dissociation,

and maybe he doesn't literally use that word, but he clearly, there was something happening to him and his feelings and there was a separation a little too often for him. I think part of he felt as though there was a disconnect between all of this wonderfulness happening and how he actually felt. So that kind of came up when you said that. So he wasn't necessarily controlling the dream. Or he was, but it felt like a dream.

There's a distance. However you want to put it, there's a distance between his feelings, his happiness and this world that loves him and attention and girlfriend and this and that. But I think that, look, I think it's a beautiful, beautiful song. And play us some more vocals. My God, walk us through some more emotional moments in this song. You left me falling and landing inside my grave.

I know that you want me dead. You're so right about the girlfriend. You can probably take a framework of like what you think something is about it. And then like suddenly it all maps to what you were just. But to me, that framing haunted me. you let me falling and landing. And I don't know if the result is now informing the interpretation. I know. That's always a thing. That's probably what I'm doing. That's probably what I'm doing.

But, um, but you know, like, be here with me now. I'm glad you're hearing me. But that was chills just now hearing that without my mind. Let's continue this section. It's so powerful. I take prescriptions to make me feel okay. I know it's all in my head. I just get sort of defensive sometimes about genre and about, like, hip hop. Like, this, that vocal, you could absolutely have a white rock band playing the instrument. It is Robert Smith. It is fucking Cure song.

Absolutely. It's, uh, I'm glad this was the guiding spirit of sad and bougie. We were like, Robert Smith and 070 shake, very similar. There's a goo-go-dall song that this is making me remember. Like, there's so much white rock music I'm picturing. that this would fit on top of musically. But it happens to be in the context. It's a black, young, black man.

From Chicago. And it's hip-hop. It ain't like he grew up in like, you know. Although, let's face it, the beats are made by a white guy, and the interpolation is of a white guitarist who's thinking about Bach. Hey, sometimes y'all make good music. Sometimes y'all make good music, man. We'll show up for it every time.

There's a lot going on here. A lot of layers. A lot of layers. Okay, can I say real quick? Yeah, yeah. This song hit so differently. the first time. So my kids had had some friends of theirs

over the house and they were all listening to some of their favorite songs on YouTube. And I walked through the room and there's a room full of nine-year-olds saying, you made my heartbreak, you made my... And I'm like, this is sad. I can't deal with that. I was like, put on a happy stuff.

Y'all like Happy by Ferrell Williams. Like, can y'all listen to some Minions music? Just like children. Hey, put on the minions. Talk about whales. Come on. Song about whales. Yeah, something by Rafi.

I don't know, some children's music or something. Something sweet. I will, you know, shout out to Oh, Gabba Gabba. I feel like that is the show. If you're a music nerd and you want to raise your kids to have taste, I feel like Yo Gabba Gabba does the trick. Anyway. I think there's just one more melody I forgot.

I have these lucid dreams where I can't move a thing, thinking of you in my bed. There's, okay, there's some. Wow. The emo-ness of the pronunciation of my. moi. That is a blink 182. That is how you say the word moi, my, in the early 2000s. Pop punk. My bed. I will say that actually is my worst case scenario. When you have a lucid dream, when you're aware you're dreaming. But then you're like, for whatever reason you want to wake up

and you realize you don't have the ability to move your body. Like that drives me freaking nuts. I'm always like, is this going to be how I like, well, I like face down in a pillow because I can't get freaking air passage. Like, seriously, there's, as much as I love a lucid dream when you start controlling stuff, like being aware you're dreaming, but being unable to move is like my terror. Well, that, Juice World talked about that when he was describing where the song came from. He said, it's the sleep paralysis. Yeah, sleep paralysis.

He talks about having the sort of image of a demon of like an old hag. It's kind of an archetypal image. I mean, it dates back. There's images from the 15th century paintings of the old hag, you know, like watching you sleep. So it's like this very deep, rich human experience to feel this sleep paralysis. So that's a big part of where the song comes from. And I love the fact that he also talked about how the song was, quote, made to be a therapy session during a period of relationship problems.

So the relationship dynamic is there. Music is therapy. Absolutely. Part of this song, this artist, and even this genre. Because when you have 10,000 people screaming back these lyrics to you live, it's so cathartic and you feel the catharsis happening for all those people in the audience. 100%. And as we often do on the show, there's a handful of lesser-known players.

There's another name who, and he's relevant to the story because he's actually part of the songwriting credits, but not usually part of the story as it's told publicly. In fact, I had to do a fair amount of digging to get, to dig up the information on his connection to this song. And that's Taz Taylor, who's also a producer. His real name is Danny Snodgrass. He was like, I got to change his name.

He definitely probably made a good choice. Commentat. He is from Jacksonville, Florida. And seventh grade, he drops out of school and starts making beats full time. Okay. If my kids are listening, you can't do that. Don't drop out of... Not of the seventh grade.

Pretty much. I think any kids listening, we would give that advice as a blanket roll, maybe consider not doing this. However... Go back and listen to the Stevie Wonder episode, kids. But that said, he makes... He kind of grows from scratch, a business, a beat-making business. And so he's 12 years old, 13, 14.

And isn't he has one of the partners at Internet... money. That's exactly where we're going with it. So he creates, he co-creates, along with Nick, this idea of, it's a producer collective basically called Internet Money. Nick is 15 at the time. Sidepiece, who now goes by DT, was 16 at the time, and Taz is a little bit older, and the three of them are basically in the beatmaking business. Now, for those of you who don't know, beat making, producing, you know, around this period of time, certainly in the early 2010s with the SoundCloud era and with YouTube happening, it's a way of being a bedroom producer,

like being a teenager, basically, not in the music industry at all, but connecting by making drum beats, basically, right? Sometimes with chord change is sometimes not. Having the underside, the musical instrumental, also known as a beat sometimes, for hip hoppers, for rappers to come, to hop on the beat and make a song.

And this is a necessary thing, especially when you're a juice world, and you are just lyrics are going through your head, head like crazy day and day out. Matchmaking between the two is a big part of what's happening in the internet. In this era, this is kind of a new thing. It's not just like the hit beatmaker of the time, the like the Kanye's of the world who make 50, 100, 200 grand per beat. A lot of bedroom producers are charging 50 to 100, 200 bucks and it's a volume game. Yeah. But one thing these guys hit upon, they're one of the first to use these blank name of rapper type beats. In other words,

they would market their beats by naming them saying this is a Drake type beat. This is the kind of thing that Kanye should hop on. And that was, their genius was doing this. The first time I saw tight beats written out, I was like, what are they talking about? Tightbeats. That's the worst name of a genre ever. What's a tight beat? But yeah, you're right.

It's like, oh, I'll give you a Rich Homi Kwan type beat. And it works. And as a collective, too, what they're also pooling is their resources. There's literally, Taz has a house. And so they're a bunch of teenagers working in this house. They're like go downstairs and do a little gaming, go upstairs to the kitchen, have a bite to eat, and then cranking out beats 24-7. One of the things that when I was doing my research, I have some speculation but not certainty,

which is I think they also pooled their publishing rights because I'm just going to cut to the chase. Juice World gets 14% of the song. And Taz and Nick Mira are sharing 1% of the song. 1% of the publishing of the song. the publishing of the songwriting credits. We'll talk about who gets the rest of it in a minute, because that's a big part of this story. But, yeah, I just thought it was interesting

to call attention to the fact that this era of beat making and this way of doing it, it's new in this era, in the SoundCloud era. Yeah, let me just say, Taz I know a little less about, but Nick Mera is, I think he's incredible. And I love the music he makes. Again, I experienced a lot of this music at the time through my kids.

I remember one of my kids was obsessed with the song Ransom by Lil Teca, and it sounds like this. It's another Nick Mera production. I know that I'm gone. They see me blowing up, not they said they want a song. I got two twin twins to turn you to a dancer.

I see two twin hours leaving one band. I got two things. He also produced Lemonade, which was like the song that introduced a lot of us to Don Tolliver, even though it's technically a Gunna song, I think. These are songs that I think inform the current, you know, zeitgeist of hip-hop songs. Absolutely.

One interesting thing about Nick, I wanted to point out, is that he says he prefers working with no-name rappers, which is sort of the opposite of what you hear from, you know, producers. Like, you always get the sense of like, I'll produce for these guys because they're my boys, but eventually I want to produce for, you know, Travis and Drake and all that. But like, this is a guy who's like, no, I like working with people who haven't quite figured out what their sound is yet. Exactly. They're finding their sound, and he's helping them find their sound.

And I said that, I think that's so dope. I think that's really cool. I think that's like when directors want to work with a lot of, you know, unknown actors to sort of help make their vision come true without some of the ego that can come when you cast just the biggest actor that you can get. It might be a little bit of that. But I also think there's like a bit of altruism in some of the quotes that I've heard Nick reported as saying. By the way, you just said that Juice World gets 14%. Nick and Taz get 1%. That's 15%.

who is getting 85% of this song? Actually, I'm so glad you asked that, because to talk about this song, we do have to start with a bit of a detour. We'll come back and land the plane. Don't you worry. But we're going to start with this song by Sting from 1993, Shape of My Heart.

He deals a cards as a meditation. Those he plays never suspect. Now, that song came from his fourth solo record. This is Sting formerly of the police, but his fourth record was called, of Ten Summoners Tales. Huge record. What year was that? It was 1993. Okay. Yeah. And the song, the story of the writing of the song is relevant. So this is a detour

of a detour, but it will all make sense, I promise you in just a moment. The writer of that riff, that is what we hear in Lucid Dreams. That guitar, it's an eight-bar loop, I should say. That guitar part is by Dominic Miller, who sings longtime collaborator and his solo work. And the way he wrote it, he says, Dominic Miller, is it was a warm-up exercise. He was sort of of experimenting with playing chords without using the third, which is kind of how you tell the tonality, major-min. These were sixth chords. And he was inspired by Chopin. Little John McLaughlin is in the mix. And it was literally, as he puts it, and he said many times, this is a warm-up exercise. And he brought it to Sting or Sting heard it. He, that wasn't really thinking, hey, Sting,

I've got a song for it. But Sting heard it, loved it. They both share a love for Bach. There's a lot of Bach in there. And by the way, this is why you've got to be in the studio sometimes. Not to keep bringing it back to Nick Mira. Yeah. But he was like, the one thing he doesn't want to do with these unknown rappers is do it virtually, like sitting like MP3s and stuff back and forth. Like, he's like, I need you physically in the studio. And I think that sort of similarly, like, Sting was around Dominic and heard this.

Yeah, they play off of each other in real time. That's the only way to do it. Because that would have never been a song because he never would have thought like this is worth sending anybody if it was that type of mindset. No, it's literally a warm-up exercise. That's a huge part of why collaborative duo is in songwriting. Like, so often it's somebody. that doesn't know the thing they're doing is good.

And the other person calls attention to it. I can tell you from first-hand experience. That happens often on this show. Yeah, well, that's true too. You're right. I'm like, cut that. And you're like, no, no, no, don't cut that. Don't cut that.

That's the gold. So as Sting puts it, quote, Dom came in with his fantastic riff, beautiful cadence, very Bach-like, with the descending bass line. So Sting walks around the garden as he puts it, listening on headphones to that as a loop, and comes up with the storyline.

And the whole thing is done in less than a day. And that's like the magic of songwriting. I love the story, but the reason why I have sort of trouble with the story of that song is when we get to the part about what you're hearing in lucid dreams exclusively being the interpolated, and I'll talk about that in a second, the interpolated guitar part, it has nothing to do with. There's nothing that Sting added to shape of my heart, meaning the lyrics, the melody. Nothing of that is in Lucid dreams. Nothing has Sting's contribution. Nothing that Sting contributed to what was used. and yet he is credited 42% of this song,

three times as much as Juice World himself, whose lyrics and melody are what people connect to. Now, of course... Does Dominic get a portion? Dominic is for... Let me be clear, sorry. 85% is shared between Sting, 50-50, split between the two of them.

So yes, the guitar players get 42.5%. That's right. But nothing of what Sting contributed to his own song made it through the sampling and interpolating process. to lose a dreams. I think, listen, I don't love it when Baby Boomer rockers go after rappers

in this way with these aggressive percentage splits. That said, Dominic's riff is out there because it's a Sting song. So I understand why Sting is sort of like the artist, you know, gets a portion. But look, I just have to say one thing about the part that's interpolated, the guitar part. Dominic Miller, the guy who wrote the part,

again, remember, he thought it was just a guitar exercise. He thought he was kind of quote unquote ripping off or just going sideways from Bach or from John McLaughlin. To him, he literally said, I can't claim it as my own really because I know where it came from and it came from classical music. I just reorganized existing ideas. To me, that's a really powerful thing to say when you think about ownership and money changing hands and just how many different kind of steps went into the process of this song being made and how many steps removed from an original idea we are. And yet we have this factual on paper legalese and contracts, 85% going not to the makers of this song. It's just, look, in a perfect world, there'd be a dollar amount where it was fair and everyone did the right thing in the right order.

I just come out of this story thinking, 85% feels a little too much, a little greedy. There is a part of me that's like 85% guys. Like, that seems aggressive. For me, there's two things going on. One is 85% seems aggressive. because in general, in songwriting, we tend to privilege the lyrics and melody 50%. And we tend to consider the instrumental 50%.

When you go into any songwriting scenario in L.A. right now, anyone who's co-writing anywhere, that's kind of implied unless said otherwise, or if somebody has a lot of power, maybe they can say, yo, it's my beat. But if you want it, you got to do this. There are certainly edge cases like that. But for the most part, 50-50.

So even if you were to consider that 8-bar loop, which is clearly substantial coming from the Sting song, even if you were to consider it the entire basis of the instrumental track, put aside the beats and the synths and everything, it's still the top line, the vocal, the melody, the personality of juice world, the exposure to the world that he brings the song. So much of that feels like more than 15 or 14% in his case. Yeah, I think so. I mean, like, look, at the end of the day, if it belongs to somebody else, they can charge you, kind of like whatever they want to charge. And that's part two, which is you're right. And the counter argument to all this would be,

I already know in my comments it's going to be, yeah, but that's how it works, man. It's like, well, copyright law is a little broken. I know that's how it works. And it's really important we remind everyone listening that teenagers were making the songs who are doing it in the SoundCloud era. There are no adults in the room who can help guide them and navigate them through the complexity of copyright law and how stuff works. We should honestly start a company called Internet Money's Uncle and we'll be the adults in the room. Well, they figured it out by now because of the loss of it.

that came up. But the song was originally posted to SoundCloud, and that was in June 2017. And then in May 2018, they make the shift. They have a deal with Interscope, Internet Money, does a deal with Interscope to have a major deal, major label distribution, which is how it becomes a number two record. Sure. And it's around that time where clearly negotiations are happening in the background, and there's permission that was not granted earlier. My speculation, which I'm almost positive is right, is that they didn't get sample clearance. They didn't get clearance when they posted it on SoundCloud. But there wasn't also...

There's no way they got. There's no way they got Sam cloud stage, no way. But the name of the game then isn't generating revenue. It's just exposure. When you're putting stuff on SoundCloud in 2017, you're doing it just to blow up and get known and maybe do shows. Can I think of that way? I want to step in here and ask you a question.

In 2024, as best as you know, what does a major label distribution get you? It's not a one-sentence answer, but the quickest answer is you just have the money and resources of a huge multi-national corporation. So you can quickly move in a lot of areas, have a lot of connections and expertise, like at the radio station level, for one thing.

Like just hitting radio. Radio wants it to happen all at once. They want a story. Music playlist. You get access to people, the curators at the big playlists. All of that is a big part of the machine. There's also money to pay for advertising. There's also access, like the credibility

that comes with being associated from a label, suddenly you're in the consideration set to be on a lot. Lala Palooza stage. Sure. So it's a lot of things. Okay. You answered it appropriately. I'm sorry.

Please continue. So what's happening in the background, I think it's safe to speculate, is that the uncleared interpolation is now part of what the label is bringing. I mean, perfect timing. They also bring their lawyers. They also bring their people that are in a position to reach out to the publishers of the Sing Song and have a conversation and negotiate. So that's obviously happening in the background because in October 20,

of 2018, Sting in Billboard says, hey, I approved this because it's a beautiful interpretation that's faithful to the original songs form. But then he makes this crack that the royalties from the interpolation are going to, quote, put my grandkids through college. And Nick Mera, just a few weeks later, tweets in a sense to lead a tweet, he's not happy with it. He's like, fuck official sting and his whole team.

He writes on November 17th, after taking 85% of lucid dreams for interpolating the song and not even sampling it as a distinction doesn't make a huge difference but his point is even after taking 85 percent he still according to nick mura threatened to take us to court for trying to get any percentage so it sounds like sting or maybe his publishers to be fair or maybe the lawyers of the publishers but there's someone in the background who the conversation is like you don't get anything so nick is telling us through this since deleted tweet that some really bad stuff was happening behind the scenes and he goes he follows he goes everyone put a fuck official sting in the comment

comments if you're real. So this, look, at the end of the day, they took 85%. That's a huge chunk. It sounds like they might have even been in a position because of how much leverage they had, because it wasn't cleared in advance. It was already out there, was already a hit. You can go in and say, yo, it's mine now. And I just want to say one thing about this, because that is what happened with Diddy. This is a really interesting point. Everyone knows this Diddy story. I'll be really brief about it. Once again, with Sting. With All Be Missing You, which samples the police song, every breath you take. stings in the mix again, it's really interesting. That is literally considered a cover.

In other words, zero percent, it's a 100 percent sting composition. But that's so interesting to me that it's considered a derivative work. It'd be like if you and I covered every breath you take, it's considered the same thing as I'll be missing you. So that's clearly what was on the line for lucid dreams. And it's about a 20 year difference ironically. It's exactly 20 years. Yeah, from 1997. From 1997 to 2017. And it kind of shows that in Sting's mind, he probably felt like this is pretty progressive.

I feel like it is mine. He's like, look, I went from 100 to 85, you know. By 2037, he might give up 30% of the song. It's funny you say that this is not the first song to interpolate or sample shape of my heart. I'm just going to play a couple of them. But what's really interesting is how across the like, there's 55 uses.

Oh, wow. I only know one. It is popular, which is the one. I know the NAS. Let's listen to the NASS one. And then you have to guess how much Sting gets from this one. Okay. Fake thug, no love, you catch a slug, CB4, gusto.

Your luck, though, I didn't know till I was drunk, though. You freak niggas played out. Get fucked and eight out. Prostitut. Two-turned bitch, I got the gauge out. That is also an interpolation, so it's not a sample. Yeah. And it's an eight-bar loop in the original in the Sting song.

They only used four of those bars, and they varied it up a little bit. Oh, yeah. They don't go further. Okay. So how. How much does Sting and Dominic Miller get of the publishing of this song, do you think? I'm going to bet 99%. In this case, they were a little more generous.

They only took 75%. Oh, see? Who would have guessed? Sting. Yeah, generous. What a minch. What a generous guy. I'm not going to play all these songs.

We will put them in the playlist that you can find on the internet. But there's a Monica song taken back. He's got 85% of the Sugar Babes shape. He's got 70. they, I should keep saying he, but it's the two of them, 50, 50 every time. They collectively share 75% of Craig David's rise and fall. The point being that, of course, the uses are different across all the songs. Being Sting's lawyer must be a breeze.

Keep going. It's just, oh, you win every time. I don't even want to say the Neme Sting. Clearly, he's got a legal dream team. All right, as we wrap up the episode, like, what do you think is the legacy of Juice World and of Luce's Dreams? I'm, listen, I think Juice World is, you know, he's emblematic of Gen Z taking control of hip hop as they should, you know, people my age, even people, you know, 10 years younger than me. We can't be doing hip hop. You don't stop to the end of time.

Got to move forward. I like that you think I'm in my 60s, but yes, exactly. I think that it should always be driven by, you know, the young, you know, and I think that that's what keeps it fresh. And I also love the fact that, you know, Juice World and others, they were talking about, things that we never got around to talk about, depression, substance abuse, anxiety. My generation used to, you know, rap about those things almost in passing, you know, like, you know, every now and then, like, you know, Biggie would drop a song, suicidal thoughts or something like that, but it was almost played for a joke most of the time.

Like, if you heard someone, yo, I'm depressed, but I hit you in the mouth, you know, like, no, like nobody ever, if we did it, it was almost a joke every single time. So I just think that, you know, by the way, that's why my generation is probably emotionally stunted. But I love the fact that, and look, Eminem, obviously, he was also one of the first people to really go, hey, my life is messed up. But I think the wonderful thing about Juice World is that it really made it okay specifically for young black kids, you know, even if they were from the south side of Chicago,

South Central, Southwest Atlanta, to also say, hey, not everything's cool. I'm dealing with depression. I'm dealing with anxiety. these mental health issues. Like, he's one of the people who made that possible. Listen, we both watched Into the Abyss,

which is a documentary about Juice World. And I remember, after we both watched it, you texted me, you're like, man, I am gutted. Can you talk to me about that?

I definitely went on the journey of, first of all, learning who this person was. It's like anything. When you go to a museum and you don't know what's on the walls, but then if you're reading the description, it's like it gives you a doorway

into what's happening. And I needed a doorway into juice world and this documentary gave it to me and then some. And hopefully, again, this episode does that for you, the listener if you weren't already a fan. But that documentary, which is basically following him in the last year or two of his life, it starts with his sort of the moment where he becomes huge, where this song is being released and his popularity blows up overnight. And it ends with his untimely death. And you just get so invested in these people and the girlfriend and the friends. And there's definitely a lot of moments with the drug intake and the anxiety where it's like

nods off in mid-sentence in that one scene. That's where I'm gutted. I'm like, that's where the like fatherly slash older brotherly, like all these emotions of connection to this person. Like, this is a person. He died six days after his 21st birthday. And these are sort of unsupervised young men that are like really young. And the lot of money suddenly overnight.

A lot of money overnight in front of thousands and accumulates, like millions of fans. With cameras on all the time. The cameras on all the time. And I think that, yes, it did come with. this additional drug message that I don't think is healthy. But I think that that's on us, the adults and the young adults and the people that were raising to address that. And in the meantime, to enjoy this honest, vulnerable music.

Yeah. And to really just let the kids lead the way, I think that we would be remiss if we didn't point out that, you know, it was with Juice World and Lou Zee Verd and other contemporary rappers, Denzel Curry, JPEG Mafia. If you don't know these names, I love Peggy. Start listening to new rap. There's great music out there.

Pushing the medium forward. Pushing the medium forward. Don't get lazy. Don't only listen to stuff that came out when you were 18 to 25. I think we saw a report recently that said it was a study like across many generations. Everybody just thinks the best music came out when I just happened to be in my late teens to early 30s. No. It's not the case.

Get out there. Empirical data backing it up at every. thinks that about their teens in every era. Absolutely. Since the 50s, the music was always better when I was a kid. Get out there, listen to music. You might be missing out on the best song of your life. My personal experience in preparing for this show and getting deep into this song,

I love doing this show. I love working with you and this team. And I love the fact that I get to explore both the stuff that's like really near and dear to my heart because I grew up listening to it and stuff that's new to me because so many doors opened for me in understanding the story behind the song and the artist. And my hope for this episode is that if there's a handful of listeners, I'm sure there's a lot of listeners who are just as open-minded as we are. But, you know, if there's any people out there for whom hip-hop or rap or whatever,

like the music isn't something they understand what's happening, this hopefully is an entry point into understanding it. Like I said, with the museum analogy, the best thing to do, and if you go to a museum and you don't know what's happening, is look at the explanation, that first essay when you walk in the door, that's sometimes all you need to kind of have an entry point into what's going on. I don't understand this is just a little bit of an explanation of what's going on. And I hope we did that today for a handful of listeners, hopefully.

I know we did that for ourselves, and I hope we pass that along. Okay, luxury, it's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gym with you, the One Song Nation, and with each other, sometimes for the first time. I'll go first. For my one more song today, I have chosen Born Again by the band Diana. Yeah, it's a really sort of trippy, atmospheric. song and it's one of those songs that I just love. That was great. I love that. I was getting like Sky Ferreira vibes a little bit. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Kind of that era when she was working with Blood Orange around 2010.

But anyway, I love that. That song is from that era. So you called it. Dreamy vibes. Dreamy vibes. All right. Well, my one more song is by The Police and it's called The Beds Too Big Without Shoot. That's really cool. Yeah. We were just talking about lucid dreams on the show. I mean, that's why I popped in my head. I can't sleep with your memory. So there's another, you know, sting connection to Juice World. To Juice World's Lucid Dreams. That's awesome. Right. As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok.

You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, D-I-A-L-L-O, and on TikTok at Diallo-R-R-R-L-R-L-Y. And you can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-U-X-U-S-U-Y. That's Luxury with 2-Xs. And TikTok, Luxury X-X. You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube. Right now, just search One Song Podcast. We'd love it. if you'd like and subscribe. And if you've made it this far, it's because I think, in my personal

opinion, you probably enjoyed the show. And if you did, we would love it if you told other people. If you share it with your friends, five stars on your podcast platforms, it all helps. Oh, and one last thing, one song nation. If you're as obsessed with the making and meaning of popular music the way we are, join us in Las Vegas on August 31st for Heartbeat Week. That's right. We'll be taping an episode of this show live and it's free. Check out the link in our bios on our socials. Luxury help me in this thing. Well, I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist luxury.

And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, D'A LaRiddle. And this is one song. We will see you next time.