Reply All - #148 Bedbugs and Aliens

Episode Date: September 26, 2019

This week, Yes Yes No returns with a raid on Area 51, and the very worst name you can call a New York Times writer. Listen to the 1st episode of Mogul Season 2: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/mogul/z3hwzx/s2-part-1-the-walls-were-sweating Further Reading: The tweet from this week's Yes Yes No. Bret Stephens' interview on MSNBC Bret Stephens' column: 'World War II and the Ingredients of Slaughter' Professor Dave Karpf's interview on NPR Lil Nas X's Area 51-themed music video Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Alex Goldman. And I'm PJ Vote. Welcome once again to Yes Yes No, the segment on the show where our boss, Alex Bloomberg, comes to us with something from the internet that he doesn't understand in the hopes that we explain it to him. Hey, Alex. Hello. So what I have is a tweet. And it is a tweet from a Twitter username Casey Johnston.

And her tweet says this. It says, Area 51, but for going to Brett Stevens' house and calling him a bedbug. Okay, I'm 100% on this one. I'm 100% on this one. Does any part of it make sense to you? Well, yes. So I know about the Brett Stevens bedbug thing. How much do you know about Brett Stevens and bedbugs?

I know that Brett Stevens is a conservative opinion writer for the New York Times. Yes. And that he writes things that a lot of people get really annoyed about. Yeah, he's written about like, the Arab mind and what's wrong with it. Right. He thinks climate change is overhyped. He thinks that the epidemic of campus sexual assault is an imaginary problem.

He's like, yeah, if this were really happening, women would just not go to co-ed colleges, which is a belief that somebody can have. Yeah. Yeah. So I remember, I know they'd gotten a fight with somebody and somehow there was a bed bug involved or the term bed bug. Oh, this makes. I'm glad.

I was like scared for me. I wouldn't get to tell you about this. This I'm glad this is good. Okay. So fill me in. So yeah, you're totally right about Brett Stevens. So in August, the institution for which he works in New York Times got a bedbug infestation, like actual bedbugs were in the building. Okay.

Which people found very funny. This is separate. Separate. This is a B plot. Yeah, B plot. They're bedbugs. Okay. And people found it funny because bedbugs are super gross and the New York Times is super fancy.

And the idea of like, you know, these dignified, elegant journalists like scratching at their like three-piece suits to get the bedbugs out. Like, people just enjoyed it for a day. Side note, we had bedbugs once. Nightmare. You had them in your house. We had them in our house. You had to, like, take everything rapid in plastic. Like, even when you try to fumigate them, they just run up into the walls.

And so they're just, like, they're crafty. Yeah, I moved to New York, and my friend was like, you can just take my furniture. And I was like, cool. Why does your box bring have knife cuts in it? He was like, I thought I had bedbugs, but I didn't. He did. Oh, no. I moved to New York and immediately had to give away everything I owned.

like some weird monk. So the New York Times got bedbugs. And then this professor named Dave Karp, who's just like Associate Professor George Rogen University, not somebody with like a big following online or whatever. Associate Professor Dave Karp. Associate Professor Dave Karp wanders on a Twitter. He sees everybody making jokes.

He knows that bedbugs are funny and that people don't like Brett Stevens. And he tweets, The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Brett Stevens. Right. That's his whole thing. And at the time he had like, like 6,000 followers.

Nine of them thought it was funny enough to favorite it. Right. It's like a pretty... So you got nine favorites. Yeah, it's one of those like everyone's shooting. I'll do with you. I've done that. You're like, this will be good.

And then you do it and you're just like, eh, yeah, not good. It's fine. So when you mention someone on Twitter, you can add them and then they see it. And it's like a weird thing to do if you're going to insult them. And if you want to be polite,

you just say their name and you don't add them. There's no reason for no say it. Yes. It's sort of like the... That's Twitter etiquette? That's Twitter etiquette. If you're just like, if you just, if you want to be polite, you don't at them. Generally, if you want to tell a joke about Brett Stevens to your friends, you say Brett Stevens's name and you don't add him.

So you don't arouse his honor. You're not trying to like start like Twitter battle. You're just like trying to talk to your pals about like, gosh, Brett Stephen did this other, did this other thing that I found it doing. And those are like the rules by which we're allowed to have a society. Right. Everyone follows his rules. And it's considered breaking those rules. is considered somewhat gauche,

if you go out of your way to search your own name in quotes on Twitter to see what people who are not trying to talk to you are saying about you. Uh-huh. The problem is if somebody says something to you and you name search, if you're going to start a fight over it,

the thing has to be really bad because the first thing you're doing is admitting that you name search. It's like when I was doing my out-of-control vanity ritual, I found this thing. And like the fact that it hurt my feelings. Yeah, but everyone's just going to look

at the fact that you name search. We're not going to look at the thing that got said. Yes. Okay, got you. So, Brett Stevens, I can't prove that he name searched, but he's not added in his tweet, and he sees it. He sees the tweet. And then he sends an email to Professor Karp and Professor Karp's boss, the provost of George Washington University, and says,

Dear Dr. Karp, someone just pointed out a tweet you wrote about me, calling me a bed bug. I'm often amazed about the things supposedly decent people are prepared to say about other people, people they've never met, on Twitter. I think you've set a new standard. First of all, Alex Bloomberg, you've been on Twitter, right? That is, I mean, I feel like you can, like, every timeline refresh, there's, like, something worse. Yeah. Yeah.

I would welcome the opportunity for you to come to my home, meet my wife and kids, talk to us for a few minutes, and then call me a bedbug to my face. Which, like, sure. Yeah. This is a really, I really enjoyed the dramatic reading. Yeah. You know what's funny is that he probably wrote that email with the same feeling that Professor Karp wrote the tweet, which is like, ha-ha. I got him. Got them. Yeah, and I think this is actually sort of Brett Stevens' MO. Like a while back, there was this story where some young journalists wrote Brett Stevens a rude email. But the way Stevens responded was to say, you know, basically I have a lot of friends in this town. Like, if you want to apply for a job, if you want to try to get some sort of journalism award, like you should be careful.

But this time when Brett Stevens does this, the professor takes the email and post it to Twitter. Oh, he screenshots the email? Yeah. Which gets, the original tweet had nine favorites. After this goes down, the original tweet gets 4.8,000 retweets. So then Brett Stevens has like a very emotional announcement that he's leaving Twitter forever because the discourse is too toxic. And then he pops up the next morning on television. Like he goes on MSNBC to talk about this Twitter fight.

Uh-huh. So I want to show you this. Like 9 o'clock in the morning, serious newsman on TV in a suit and tie, soberly. talking about how somebody called him a bed bug. Brett, I have to ask you, because there's a lot of buzz about this. You deactivated your Twitter account after a controversy that involves someone calling you a name. Would you like to comment on that? Yeah, I'm going to be careful with my words, because I know these are going to be examined carefully.

Let me just skip ahead a little bit. So I wrote him a personal email. I didn't go to Twitter. I wrote him a personal email, which I think was very civil, saying that I didn't appreciate it, that I would welcome him to come to my home in New York, meet with my family, and see if he would call me a bedbug to my face, because a lot of things people say on social media

aren't the things they're really prepared to say in one-on-one interactions. I also copied his provost on the note. People are upset about this. I want to be clear, I had no intention whatsoever to get him in any kind of professional trouble, but it is the case at the New York Times and other institutions that people should be aware, manager should be aware of the way in which their people, their professors or journalists,

interact with the rest of the world. That's certainly the case. I wasn't trying to get him in any trouble, but I just wanted his manager to be aware of what he was doing. Also, just like, these are arguments that were made when Professor Karp went on NPR to give a counter interview to Brett Stevenson's interview about the tweet. Can I just play you a short clip of that? Please. Support for NPR and the following message come from Vig. Vigot is a digital product agency that partners with businesses to propel growth, reduce costs by revenue through innovation. Learn how Vigot can help your business.

What a terrible name? It's Vigot with a V. A little close. This next story may offer a little. I'm just going to skip to the part where the professor explains exactly why he thinks Stephen's email was messed up. The key here again is him deciding to CC my provost, which he discussed on MSNBC and he said that he wasn't trying to get me in trouble. he just wanted my bosses to know what I was saying. Ceasing the provost means that he's not actually inviting me over to his house.

He's not actually calling for civility. He is trying to use his station in life to make clear to me at a lower station in life that I'm not supposed to make jokes about him. What I like about this is he just has a very good job of explaining exactly the subtext of the email. Yeah. It's why you don't mess with like a digital politics professor if you're going to mess with somebody probably. Like he's very good at explaining what's going on. One of the 7,000 reasons why he shouldn't have sent that email. Right. The next thing that happens in the story is my favorite part

of the story. So three days later, pretend you're just a normal New York Times reader. You open the op-ed section and you see that New York Times op-ed columnist Brett Stevens has written a huge piece just about the Holocaust. And there's this massive picture of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. And it's just paragraph after paragraph of just sort of a primer on the Holocaust, which the writing is nice or whatever, but you're reading it and you're like, why, why on this random August day are we talking about this? And 11 paragraphs in, there's a reveal that only makes sense to you if you have followed all this drama, which is he has this, can I just read the part in question?

The political mindset that turned human beings into categories, classes, and races also turn them into rodents, insects, and garbage. Anti-Semitism is exactly the same as D. Lousing, Himmler would claim in 43. Getting rid of life, it's not a matter of videology, it's a of cleanliness. Watching Warsaw's Jewish ghetto burn that year, a Polish anti-Semite was overheard saying, the bedbugs are on fire. The Germans are doing a great job. So he's comparing that professor's tweet to the Holocaust. He's saying that professor's tweet was anti-Semitic because everyone on earth knows that bedbugs are code for Jewish people. And that this is the rhetoric that dehumanizes people and allows for genocide. Is Brett Stevens Jewish? He is Jewish.

Right. The person he's essentially accusing of anti-Semitism is also Jewish. Right. Which, like, I don't know what Brett Stevens' heart believes. Like, in his original email guy, there's no sort of reference to him believing that this was anti-Semitic. Before sort of everybody on the internet started pointing out how much he'd overreacted and how strange is what's from to do, there's no reference to him seeing it as anti-Semitic. Once he started to kind of get, just like lose the public opinion battle, this, he wrote this piece. And, like, I mean, it's the internet. You can be offended about whatever you want.

Like, those are the rules. But, like, just the final irony of this, like, to step back, like, remember, this is Brett Stevens. His whole brand is that there needs to be more free speech. Liberals are offended by everything. He wants to be that guy. But he also wants to get really mad about being called a bed bug. And you just can't do both of those things. You can't be like, you triggered liberals.

And then act in a way that is, like, completely over the top. Yes. Yes. Because someone called you a buck. Right. So you guys want to talk about Area 51 or what? Yeah, so great. There's a whole second part of this tweet.

So that's the Brett Stevens part. So Area 51, but for going to Brett Stevens' house and calling him a bed bug. So, yeah. So what does that mean? So are you familiar with Area 51? I am familiar with Area 51. What can you tell me about it? Area 51 is the place.

You're off to a great start. It's a place. It's an area. There's 50 other areas. And it's a place where I think people believe that aliens, where conspiracy theorists believe that the U.S. military is hiding the shit that they're hiding. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right. Area 51 is north of Las Vegas, and it is an Air Force base where allegedly aliens are being kept and experimented on by the U.S. government. Okay. Are they alive or dead? A little from column A, a little from column B. Okay, gotcha. I don't know if you guys have ever seen the alien autopsy.

I've seen the alien autopsy. Do you know about it? It's this video supposedly of, it's like a grainy video. God, it scared the shit out of me. I wrote a paper about it in science class in fifth grade. You guys are like that. laughing, but I got an A on it. What was the paper about whether it was real or not?

The paper was about if it was faked, how they would have faked it. Oh. It was like a creative work. I didn't do very well in science generally. But like, yeah, it's this video where it's like, it's like grainy and like sort of undercoverly and undercover shot. And it's supposed to be them like doing the autopsy on the alien body. Uh-huh.

You really need a willing imagination to, yeah. Right. It's a classic. It's a pre-internet classic. All right, got it. Okay. So Area 51, like, there were rumors in the 50s and 60s, and there was, like, there were UFO sightings in the desert. Yeah.

But the person who really popularized Area 51 as a concept was this guy named Bob Lazar. Okay. In, like, the 80s. So I'm sure he's well known in the UFO community because he's been talking about this for decades. And this fringy documentary came out last year that's all about how he supposedly uncovered spacecraft and technology at Area 51. Let me show you the trailer. This story is extraordinary, especially if it's true.

And it all started in the desert. It's north of Las Vegas. A local scientist who worked at Groom Lake. Said to be where top secret weapon systems have been tested over the years. Wow. This is so so slick. So the story of Bob Lazar is he got hired at a facility. near Area 51, this place called Groom Lake.

This is his version of events. Okay. And he says his job was, he was, like, contracted by the government to reverse engineer, like, captured weaponry and aircraft. Oh, like, the alien ship dropped a laser. You figure out how it works so we can build our own? Well, initially, it was, like, Russian aircraft. And then one day they were like, oh, we got this other ship you should take a look at. And they brought him into a room with a spacecraft that he calls, what does he call it, the sport model extraterrestrial?

So, their names like cars. Yeah, basically. And so what ended his illustrious career reverse engineering alien space cars? Well, he, you know, he decided to become a whistleblower. And he stars in this documentary and everyone hates it. It is an absolutely uncritical look at him. It requires no authentication of any of the information that he says. It's just like him telling his story.

and it's all treated as fact. Yeah. So the documentary comes out. It is largely ignored. One person who does not ignore it happens to be one of the most popular podcasters in the world, Joe Rogan. People love Joe Rogan. Yeah, people do love Joe Rogan. Yeah.

And Joe Rogan is, like, really into flying saucer stuff. And I think Joe Rogan actually can sometimes be a pretty tough interviewer, but, like, he really softballs this. He, like, loves UFO. so much that he is very, very deferential to our man Bob Lazar. And the result is that tons of people who never would have seen the documentary about him go and watch his documentary and are like talking about Area 51 again. The other thing that happened is that one of the singers of Blink 128 quit the band, started a nonprofit dedicating to proving that aliens are real, got a hold of what he said

were like undercover Navy videos of unidentified flying objects, which turned out to be real. and the Navy confirmed it. And we're actually kind of gripping. Yes. Pretty cool. But basically, like, UFOs were in the public consciousness this summer because of all this stuff. And so, like, that is what is the sort of set up for the tweet that you need to know about. Right.

And what happened next is there's this kid, his name is Maddie Roberts, and he heard that Joe Rogan Bob Lazare interview. And just like, he's up, he's in the middle of the night, he's bored, he's in college, he's like, all right, I'm going to make a joke Facebook page largely for myself, for my friends, whatever, that is called Storm Area 51, they can't stop all of us. It's like absurdist flashmobs or something like that. But you don't go.

But then you don't go. So he makes a joke Facebook page called Storm Area 51. They can't stop all of us. And it says, we will all meet up in rural Nevada and coordinate our parties. If we Naruto run,

we can move faster than their bullets. What's a Naruto? Let's see them aliens. You don't know what a Naruto run is. Don't know. I don't know. I expected you not to, Alex. So, Naruto is an anime about ninja training.

And just like, the show has, like, such a complicated mythos that I can't even begin to explain. Is it good? It's not for me, but I think a lot of people like it. So I'm not going to say it's bad. You're afraid of big anime? I'm terrified of it. But in Naruto, the most of it. talented of the ninja so so they do this particular run where they sort of cock their

bodies forward and they put their arms out behind them I'm gonna there's no room in here to do that go for it but they kind of go out they kind of run in the studio apparently I'm not quite getting it yeah you guys actually move but like they let the gravity of their they let the gravity of their bodies you're leaning like the woman on the front of the Rolls-Royce kind of they put their arms out But then how did they actually run? Do the running part. Yeah, go out in the studio.

Hold on. Well, you got to move so I have like some runway to do this. Alexwoman has gotten up, is standing, and is revving himself up to do a Nerudo run in the studio. This is going to. You take your headpaces off. I'm going to. All right. Ready?

Here you go. You were going to run right into the wall. Generating a lot of speed right there. in the five-foot length of our studio. Well, the important thing about the Naruto run is that you can dodge projectiles. What is it about leaning forward and putting your hands on your back?

That makes you talk about it. It's anime logic. I don't know. It's just... Right. But the idea is, if you Naruto run, you can dodge the bullet. So everyone's going to Naruto run into Area 51.

Like here's one from yesterday. It says, area 51's going to get raided. Hell yeah, boy, Naruto runners, where are you at? And it's a gif of a bunch of people Nerudo running on a beach. Are those people really Naruto running? Yeah. Is that the thing people just do in real life?

Yes. I mean, it's like, it's like as a, not like if they're trying to win a race, but like it's a thing, it's definitely like a thing that people do as a joke or a reference. You know what I mean? Yeah, there's just so much world out there.

I know. It just makes me happy. Like somewhere on a beach, a bunch of people did an anime run. Here's another one that says, tomorrow's the day, Godspeed you majestic warriors. And it's like a computer rendered image.

of a giant alien that shackled and there's like all these people Naruto running in front of it. And somehow the color scheme of it just looks like Independence Day. Also at one point, Lil Nas X did a remix of Old Town Road.

Oh yeah, don't you worry. I've got that all taken care of for you. What? You know Lil Nas X, right? You know Old Town Road. Oh, yeah. It's a great song. So he drops this video

and the video is a depiction of the raid on Aira 50. He's made like a fantasy of how the Naruto run on Area 51 would perfectly liberate the. It's like an advertisement for doing this stupid thing. Right. And he's a little bit of X who is like the person best at manipulating the Internet right now. And so him doing this also just takes the meme and like mainlines it even further. Right.

And it's him and Young Thug, Mason Ramsey, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Keanu Reeves wearing Naruto's outfit. Here, I'll put it on for you. Just give him a second to collect himself. So this video It opens with like a panning shot of the front gate of Area 51 And it's flying an American flag with an alien instead of stars And there's like a sleeping guard And it pans to his cell phone

And it's a text from Little Nazex that says We're coming for you, bro So the military rolls in They get all primed for some kind of attack They're all sweating bullets and Lil Nas X, young thug, Mason Ramsey, and Billy Ray Cyrus show up on horses. And behind them is like a herd of people Naruto running, including Keanu Reeves. Just because.

And then just skipping ahead a little bit. So then they finally get into Area 51 and there are a bunch of aliens giving them like souped up cars, hovering motorcycles. A million chains. A metallic horse. and they ride away into the sunset. So by the time that the Little Nazex video was released, this Facebook page that Maddie Roberts made as a joke for himself has millions of people on it saying,

yes, we're going to go to Area 51 and we're going to storm it and find the alien technology. In fact, so in addition to people finding it very funny, like authorities are kind of worried that something's actually going to happen. and the fella who organized it, he kind of freaked out a little bit because he was like,

oh my God, what have I done? Like I started a house party in the whole neighborhood's doing. Right, I started a thing that could actually cause people harm. So he decided he was going to do like a music festival that would try and move the crowd

away from Area 51 toward this like music festival, which he was calling alien stock. How old is he? He's in college. He's like 21. Oh, such a 21-year-old idea. Yeah, also the idea

that you've gotten people excited about aliens and you're going to get him to go see a music festival. So Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop Us All, was scheduled for Friday, September 20th. Today is Friday, September 20th. That's right. Whoa. So did it happen?

Well, as you might imagine, millions of people did not show up to Area 51. And last night at about three in the morning. A couple. giant UFO lifted off? A couple dozen people showed up at the front of Area 51 and politely asked to get in. It's not exactly the same as Naruto running. Wow. I think we have enough to explain Area 51, but for going to Brett Stevens' house and calling him a bedbug.

Yes. Right? Yes. I think we now know. Which is? Which is Casey Johnson wrote this tweet, Area 51, but for going to Brett Stevens' house and calling him a bedbug. which I now find very funny, as is often the case,

two separate memes combined. There's a bed bug one and an area 51 one. We're going to take the bed bug one first. A professor called New York Times columnist Brett Stevens. Brett Stevens then made a big deal out of this, said this was akin to an antisemitic slur from the Holocaust,

and actually wrote the professor an email in which he ced the professor's boss, the provost, and told him in the email, this is the worst thing I've ever seen on the internet. and why don't you come to my house and call me a bed bug to my face? Yes. That's the bed bug part.

Right. The Area 51 part in the last year, Area 51 has become this really big thing on the internet because there was a documentary that came out about a UFO conspiracy theorist and a kid, this young man, made a joke online saying like, ha, ha, ha, wouldn't it be funny if we all went to Area 51

and did something called a Nerudo run into Area 51 and rescued the aliens and it was sort of a joke, but then as sometimes things happen with jokes, actually people showed up at Area 51 demanding to see the aliens. Okay, so that's the Area 51 part. And so the joke of this tweet

is the writer is imagining that a group of people are taking the Area 51 treatment and applying it to the Brett Stevens' invitation to come to his house and call him a bed bug. I think we're at Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, we're very much at yes, yes, yes.

That is amazing. That was one where it was like actually once I got the full story and I read it again, it was 100 to 150 times more enjoyable. It's like you needed the 3D glasses for the joke. I needed the 3D glasses and once I had the mind, I was like, oh, well, nicely done. Nicely done, Casey Johnston.

You deserve your check. Just 40 minutes. 40 minutes of explanation. And it's a good joke. Yeah. Coming up after the break, mogul. Okay, both Alexes are gone. I'm now in the studio with Shruthi.

Hello, Shruthi. Hello. You, for like a month, you've just been. Stop talking about how much you like the new season of Mogul. Yeah, I, everybody on the show knows this about me. I'm always trying to sneak like dance music into reply all episodes. If you ever hear like crazy techno that just before the break, no, that was me. Yes.

And the thing about Mogul, it's a skimlet show. It's set in the world of hip hop. They managed to do this thing with their podcast, which is, this like merging of music and story in a way that I just really love to listen to while walking around. And I just wanted to, I was hoping we could play the first half of the second episode for people. And do we need to do anything to set it up? All you need to know is that the entire season, season two of Mogul, is about two live

crew, which is this Miami bass group that essentially set the stage. for hip hop in the South. Okay. You should also know that it's a band that for better or for worse introduced really raunchy sex rhymes into hip hop. And that's part of what this whole season's about,

but for this clip, it means definitely don't listen with kids. Cool. Let's go. Miami bass is hip hop from the south from the land of Date County. And it's known for extremely like upbeat, dance rhythm and bass.

If you had to make, make a sort of, not generic, but if you had to make a common bass beat with your mouth, what would the beat sound like, like bum, bu, bum, bum. Oh, I do it. It's like based on the Gumba beat from the Bahamas, it's like, do-dh-dh-dhack-d-dha-dha-dha-dha-dha-dha. It's like that, yeah. The polyrhythm, it's a proper polyrhythm. The Caribbean polyrhythm mixed with American funk and soul. That's what you would hear in the garbage cans or in the school lunchroom.

It's a festival beat. Yeah, yeah, it sounds like a party, exactly. The sound of Miami is the sound of a city surrounded by islands. We're basically a belt and part of Haitians, Jamaicans, Bahamians, Cuba, Puerto Ricans. And that's what it is, because that's what we are. So when we went to school, Bahamians and Haitians at the time, when Duvalier was trying to take over Haiti and mistreating the same, old, they worked their way to Miami as well, and the Jamaicans had their section, and it was like,

we all went to school together. Over the years, people have come from all these places to live in Miami. When they came, they brought their beats with them. And those beats, they became the backbone of Miami bass. The way I would describe Miami bass is Kunga's, Tom Tom's, combination of reggae bass and calypso. with the tempo going about a hundred and twenty to hundred and thirty beats a minute. 808, 909, bass kicks, cowbell, the infamous cowbell. That's it, some high hats.

A nice snapping snare, you know, I got a snap or pop. And there's one final ingredient. The thing that really sets this music apart from everything else. deep, booming bass. Yeah, base, bro. I love that shit. That's good. That's good. Because it's not really Miami bass, unless it knocks.

Hard. The beats getting inside of your brain, or past your brain inside of your solar, whatever, is in there and just makes you fucking want to funk out and have fun. A lot of people consider two live crews throw the D to be their first true bass record. What rapper's delight was to hip-hop, though the D was to Miami bass.

When the group dropped that single in 86, they captured the sound of Miami and put it on wax. But outside of the 305, hardly anyone had heard of the bass scene or the two-life crew. That was all about to change, because the two-life crew were going to take this new sound and had something of their own. Lyrics so outrageous and so dirty

that they permanently changed the hip-hop landscape. And Luke Campbell, the king of the pack jam, he was going to take this explosive new sound, and he was going to sell it to the world. I'm Brandon Jenkins, and on this episode of Mogul, hip-hop gets nasty. When Throw the D started to pop off,

the two-life crew were a duo. There was Mr. Mix on the decks, crafting the beats and producing the records. And there was fresh kid ice on the mic, spit and rhymes. But Mr. Mix figured that the band could be even better if they added an additional MC, and he knew just the right person.

Marquis from the two-live crew, Day County's old school early edition, AAA G at a rap game official. That's a cool intro. You all follow me on Instagram, Brother Marquis, the two-live crew, all one word, Mark Demetrius, on Facebook. Brother Marquise had met Mr. Mix out in Cali a few years earlier. They hit it off. And Mix told Marquis that if he ever needed another rapper, he'd hit him up.

It's kind of marketable, not bad to look at, I think, and I could rhyme. With Marquise on board, the two-life crew's lineup was complete. So they all packed up their shit and moved across the country to the place where their music was as hot as the weather. Miami. Luke Campbell had made the crew a hit at the pack jam. And now he had offered to manage the group. He told them that once they got to Miami, he'd helped get them a record deal. He also told them he set them up with the place to live.

I'm going to tell you how crazy it was. We were living at his girlfriend. friend's house that he was shacking up with, mom's house. The mom, the daughter, Luke's living with her. He didn't convince them to allow me, Marquise, and Chris, to live there at the house until he can get an apartment for us. We was there for a month. One of the most surprising things about this story is that none of the architects of the

Miami Bay Sound were actually from Miami. They were all outsiders. But as soon as they got there, they were ready to dive in. They wanted to make music that sounded and felt like their new home. Hot town, summertime, you know, the whole atmosphere that says party and sex, you know what I mean? Dancing, shaking your ass and sex. Shortly after moving to Miami, the group started to work on a song called Move Something. It would take all the things they were seeing and hearing and doing in Miami and stir them into a thumping bass track.

First came the drum loop. Mr. Mix found that at a high school football game. See, Miami's renowned for its high school marching bands. They're big, they're loud, and they're exciting to watch. That inspired Mr. Mix. One of the high schools down there had a breakdown in their drumline routine, and they would say, move something. Then they would go into some kind of drum solo thing.

Move something. Mix took a little bit of the drum solo thing. that chant and it became the foundation for the song Move Something. But they needed something else to really make it pop. Since the early days, when he was spinning in Air Force barracks, Mr. Mix had been playing around with the idea of using samples from X-rated comedy records. Shit like this. You know, they got a new dish powder out now.

This is made out of Allen, LSD, and Kentucky Colonel Sanders chicken fat. It makes your pussy up tight. And out of sight and finger-licking good. These albums from comedians like Lawanda Page and Richard Pryor were incredibly raunchy. It mixed figured that sort of stuff would play well with a Miami crowd. Seeing how sexualized the market was, I knew that I could put those parts and pieces in, and it would be funny and be raw and all of that stuff based on how those people was acting in Miami.

Just say, wow, these are crazy down there. Florida made me kind of see that those records was real life. One night, Mix was listening to a skit by Luanda Page and Skillet Leroy, and that's where he found the perfect sample for Move Something. You know, there's a sample, drop your draws and over your legs out wide.

So that's going through the record, going through the record. So Mix had the beat, he had the hook. Now the song needed lyrics. That was where Marquis and Ice came in. As soon as they heard the same, song, they knew their rhymes had to be dirty. And they swung for the fences. I'm proud, so let's go for a walk through the park. You can suck my dick in the dark and just do what I ask. Bitch been dope, but let me ride you backside like dogs do each other. I know

that you're with it, so don't start frutting. I don't want to be a mad. I want to move something. The way move something was made, that was pretty much a two live cruise formula. They'd find a sample or something that inspired them. Mixed with craft the beats, and then ICE and Marquise will lay down their vocals and mine the English language for words that rhyme with dick. And it was these dirty rhymes that made the two live crews stand out. These days, we take it for granted that sex plays a big part in hip-hop. We all know Kyas, my neck, my back. We've all seen Nellie swiping a credit card down to dancer's ass crack in the tip-drow video.

But back in the late 80s, when Two-Live Crew were starting out, this stuff felt really new. Mix, Marquise, and Ice were the flag bearers. or flying the freak flag. We're the only rappers out here talking really, really crazy when it comes to sex. Yeah, nobody else is doing it. What they did was they weren't fully uncensored. This is Jacob Catell.

Jacob's a journalist. You heard him at the start of the episode explaining Miami Base. They started talking about fucking and they did so with no remorse. Like, they put it out there all the way because that's normal. That's what real people doing in real life.

The two-law crew had their product, booming bass, and endless rhymes about screwing. But now they needed to get their music out there. And that's where Luke Campbell comes in. Luke liked what he was hearing and thought it would appeal to a much bigger audience than just the kids at the pack jam. He was ready to shoot this shit into the stratosphere. After the break, Luke Campbell proves the oldest saying in the world. Sex sells. All right, that is our preview of Mogul.

If you want to hear the rest of the story, you can listen to the season week by week on whatever podcast player you use. or if you go to Spotify, the whole season is available right now. Reply is hosted by me, PJ Vote, and Alex Goldman. We're produced by Shruthy Pimminani, Fia Bannon, Damiano Marquetti, Anna Foley, Jessica Young, and Emmanuel Jochi. Our executive producer is Tim Howard.

We're mixed by Rick Kwan, fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our intern is Emily Rostick. Special thanks this week to Lycra Frank. Also, we have a new logo. You might have noticed it. Let us know if you like it. And if you don't, just send us an email.

It's Ira Glass at This AmericanLife.com. Our theme song is by the mysterious breakmaster cylinder, and our ad music is by Build Buildings. Matt Lieber is 20 bucks in your hoodie pocket. Listen to our show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in a couple weeks.