The Bill Simmons Podcast - Scooter Braun on Growing Up on Basketball, Managing Music Stars, and Making Music Pop (Ep. 326)

Episode Date: February 14, 2018

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by talent manager Scooter Braun, who discusses his upbringing around basketball (6:00), the cyclical nature of music (16:00), the decision to roast Justin Bieber (23:00), Kanye's creativity (30:00), the narcissistic nature of superstardom (48:00), the best basketball players in music (1:08:00), and the struggles of safety on tour (1:18:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Coming up, Scooter Braun. We've circled each other for a while. I think he's done other podcasts. He's never done one like this. Long, wide-ranging conversation about basketball, music, some of the stars he's worked with, whole bunch of stuff. There's no way you will not enjoy this one. First, Pearl Jam. Scooter Braun in the house. Bring your staff. Very excited for this podcast.

I'm excited too. They don't know where it's going. Yeah, we have no clue where this is going to go. This is going to be fun. How's he sound? All right? Good. The sitting positions are always interesting.

You're the laid-back position. Yeah, pretty laid-back. Basketball, let's start there. What do I need to know about you in basketball? I thought basketball was going to be my whole life growing up. My dad is a coach high school in AAU. I played AAU. I played for the state team, went to play D3 and broke my dad's heart because I wanted to start as a freshman, not sit the bench.

Didn't last long in college anyway because I started my business. I was going to say, you lasted like a year in college, right? Yes, because my best friend is Jay Williams, played at Duke. And I was seeing Jay on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and no one cared about our games. So I was like, I don't know if I want to play. And I started a business, and one thing led to another. What college was it? I forget.

Emory. Yep. And then I've always just loved the game. My brothers all played D1. I had two brothers who played at Brown. I had another brother who played at Georgetown and then transferred and led American University to the NCAA tournament. So you're like the failure of the family to your dad.

Yeah, pretty much. I was the bum. I'm the shortest, probably least athletic, and the oldest of four boys and a girl. And my sister was a D1 lacrosse player. But I got the best jump shot in the family. Oh, there you go. By far. So you were that kid in college who you showed up and you're immediately trying to make money from parties and T-shirts.

And you were that kid. I was that kid only because I didn't like being broke. Yeah. I had never been to a nightclub when I got to college. And I just saw an opportunity to make some money because everyone in my school had credit cards. And my dad was like, well, I was broke in school, so now you're broke in school. So what was the breakthrough? What was the first thing you did that was like, oh, shit, I can make money from this?

Fake IDs. Yeah, a buddy of mine was selling fake IDs. What year is this? This is my freshman year. So it was beginning of 2000. I get to school, 2001. And he's making amazing New York fake IDs, but he's horrible at marketing and selling them.

He's selling them, but he's going to get caught. And I was like, all right, we're going to switch this up. I'm going to be a part of this. And I laid out a whole plan how we would fly into state schools under false names on the weekends, sell as much as we could using AirTran x fares for 50 flights and then leave before anyone realized we were and that was the rule never keep in touch with anyone and then he kept in touch with some people so i bailed and sure enough he got caught four months later um and that was like wasn't that like a

felony uh i have no idea what you're talking about i'm gonna deny everything okay this is like that was like pretty illegal back then now the ideas are too good yeah i don't think i have no idea what you're talking about. I'm going to deny everything. That was pretty illegal back then. Now the ideas are too good. I don't think you can take them. I have no idea. I probably made up that entire story just now. And then I was walking by this nightclub, and I said to the guy, if I bring some people here next week, would you give me some money? And he was like, yeah, sure.

How many people? I was like, well, how many people do you hold? He said, 800. I was like, cool, I'll do that. And he looked at me like i was crazy i went to kinko's i made flyers i called it kryptonite entertainment because i was a superman fan and uh so you created a fake company a fake company the whole thing kryptonite entertainment and you know everything else and then you know within six months i was the largest college party promoter in the country revenue wise and um and the rest is kind of history

i started you have to hire a staff or were you i had just a bunch of freshman girls passing out flyers for me that i was friends with because i had a high school sweetheart so i was friends with all these girls i wasn't threatening to them yeah and uh i was like hey can you pass these out for me and i'll give you free drinks and free access for you and your girls and when you get all the freshman girls coming, the whole school comes. And I started learning to promote. And I met this guy, Jason Weaver. My first party, he was an actor.

He said, do you want to see how the other half lives? And I said, what does that mean? He goes, black people. And in Atlanta at the time, white people went to techno clubs. And black people went to hip hop clubs. And I didn't like techno at that time. So he and I went. And I was very comfortable being a minority. I was a minority on my AU basketball team my whole life.

Yeah. So we went in and this promoter named Alex Gidewan, who's still the biggest club owner now in Los Angeles, I mean, in Atlanta. He was the biggest promoter within the black community. And Alex kind of took me in and taught me the ropes of promoting. And that was how I learned how to run a cut line and how to do different things. When I came back to New York, this guy, Mark Baker was opening Lotus in New York City. And he took me under his wing and taught me how to, you know, build that type of brand. And that's how I became a big promoter. But I just hated the stigma of it. I

didn't want to be a guy someday who had kids and had to go to a nightclub. And, you know, I met Jermaine Dupri along the way. And he said, you know, why don't you come learn this over here? I became the vice president at Sosa Def. I was 20 years old. The first artist I ever worked was Ludacris, throw them Bows at my parties. So I was like the white boy of Atlanta at a time when Atlanta was on the rise. And it was great. And a lot of these guys, we came up together. I knew Jeezy when he was an actual drug dealer before he was rapping.

We were friends. He would come to my parties. But yeah, it's funny we're doing the podcast today because last night I was looking at this picture of my family. And I just had this surreal moment of like, how the hell did I get here? Yeah. And kind of reflecting on it all and just very lucky and blessed. So when you went to college, were you just like, I'm going to take some classes and play basketball? Yeah, I just-

None of that other stuff even occurred to you? i didn't know anything but basketball yeah i mean i was that kid who i just played basketball and went to house parties with my girlfriend and i didn't know anything else i know i wanted to do a lot more and that's why i chose atlanta and emory because i wanted to go far away from where i was from where no one knew me and i wanted a city and I wanted to build something. But basketball was kind of like my whole life until that point. So I didn't really know what the plan was when I got there. So a little luck there too, because you got to Atlanta right as this whole music scene is

kind of turning into its own entity. Yeah. I mean, I think anybody who's successful and says that they created their own luck is an asshole. Yeah. I think if you're born in the United States now, you already won the lottery. You're not born in a third world country. You're not born into a situation that's rough.

Like you already won, you know, geographic luck. Yeah. You know, and then if you're born, you know, in the circumstances i was where each generation things were getting better um that already makes me incredibly lucky and then being in atlanta i read a book about david geffen called the operator which changed my life and in the book he said uh you want to be in entertainment but movies movies took years, TV took years, and a song could change your life in a night. And that made me look at kind of my surroundings in Atlanta.

I was like, okay, I'm going to do this music thing because it's here. Yeah. And it's happening. Yeah, and it was happening. And, you know, it was when I joined Jermaine, the first thing I worked on was the Youngbloods and then Anthony Hamilton and Jay Kwan. And if you look closely,

I'm in the Ludacris stand up video. Really? Yeah, I'm the club promoter and it dancing around with the big girl. But, but, you know, it was, we all came up together and it was fun and we were all young and exciting. And, you know, you were going into neighborhoods. I went into Bankhead. And my buddy said, go check out this group. It was called The Shop Boys. And I wasn't a fan of the group. But I connected them with this producer I was friends with named Pit that I was managing at the time. And we made a song called Party Like a Rock Star. And it became the number one ringtone.

And it was just like a wild time. Any strip joints with Gucci or no? No. But funny, Gucci doesn't know know this but he had a guy working with him years and years ago this is before coach k before and i had a little studio in atlanta and he came to use it and they didn't pay oh come on gucci yeah literally they owed me like six thousand dollars and it was like i couldn't afford to not have six thousand dollars back then and like his guys just weren't paying and i had to like figure out how to get paid by these guys and they're like oh it's gucci's got it you know and

and they didn't pay and i i literally to this day i remember they were the only bill that never got paid and before i had the relationships that like people would pay me because you had to you know let people know you couldn't be fucked with in atlanta at that time but uh but gucci was so you had people killed no i didn't have people killed but he was one of those guys that i just didn't want to go there i was just like sure whatever yeah keep the six grand gucci yeah but it was i actually put it on my buddy who booked it this manager i had for the studio i was like you need to figure this out or it's on you it was kind of like i always ran things like i saw in the mafia movies yeah where if someone didn't pay money owed the person who took responsibility had to carry that weight right

and that was like everything i saw in the mob movies like you vouched you pay and meanwhile i was just like a kid trying to figure it out like watching these movies what was how many years between the atlanta scene taking off and america realizing that the atlanta scene was taking off the rest of the country um it was like nine months a year look it was pretty quick i think for me it was like it was taking off i was 19 when i got there and we started doing that and then like 2021 i started traveling first time like coming out to LA and everything and everywhere I went New York and LA all the clubs all they did was play our music yeah so you know so it was about two years before it really came together but it wasn't because of one artist it was because of

everything that was going happening in Atlanta in that community everyone was kind of supporting each other everyone was collaborating you know welcome to atlanta with jermaine is a great example of what was taking place there because the actual original one was just all these artists in atlanta coming together um and it was it was just a mecca it was a hub and uh it was a great place for a young guy who's entrepreneurial to be because atlanta gave me everything so you figured out club promoter, I can make a lot of money, but I'm up till four in the morning, four nights a week, and I'll be burned out in 10 years. And that's not a great long-term path for me.

I don't want to speak badly on anybody, but there was a promoter I got to know really well. And everybody was admiring his life because he drove a really nice car and he had a young girlfriend in it and i would rather be my father than him all day long yeah and my father was my hero so you know i didn't want that life because it wasn't the life i aspire to like i remember my dad's life when you're 26 but not when you're like it wasn't even fun at 26 it wasn't like i was doing it at 20. You got to understand, if you were to talk to Ludacris and his manager, Shaka, or actually DJ Irie, who's the official DJ of the Miami Heat.

Yeah. The way he and I met was I was doing the Ludacris Eminem after party for Ludacris after the tour that he was on with Eminem in Miami. He's the biggest DJ in know, DJ in Miami. And he comes to the door of Mansion, I think it was at the time. And I'm not letting him in because I'm like, you're on the guest list, but you only have three and you're here with eight people. And he's like, do you know who I am? I was like, I don't care.

And he went on the radio the next day to talk shit about this kid. By the way, it was a 21 and up club. I was 20. Like, so it was just a weird existence. Yeah. What was your big break to officially become a guy in music? Jermaine. I mean, it really was ludicrous.

Ludicrous and Shaka put me in the music business. And that party made a name for myself because I got Showtime through a friend to sponsor it. And at the time, corporations weren't sponsoring rappers. You know, Jay-Z hadn't done the Nike shoe yet. Like, it wasn't happening. And so that kind of gave me a little bit of a name. But it was Jermaine. Jermaine Dupree asked me to go out one night and meet him in Atlanta.

And he took me to the bottom of this place called Dragonfly Lounge. He was doing his best friend's birthday upstairs, Eddie Skeeter Rockweathers. And we went downstairs. And I'll never forget the meeting because we sat on these tall kind of bar stools. And Jermaine is not the tallest man. And while he was giving me this speech, his feet were dangling. And I was so fascinated with how short he was that his feet could dangle from these benches um but he said to me you're never gonna get to mansions throwing parties and i was like well

i'm actually doing pretty well but but um and he said you're never gonna get to mansions throwing parties and um why don't you come work with me and within six months i was the vice president at so set up Records running marketing. Did you have people being like, what the fuck does this kid know? He was in college for a year and he's 21? No, because I was running a pretty big business in Atlanta at the time. I was running. So you had nothing to prove at that point.

I was making a lot more money throwing parties than what Jermaine was paying me. Yeah. So no one was really questioning it. And I was like his whiz kid. I was this young kid. And I started developing things pretty fast and became one of the biggest earners in the company pretty quickly. What are you wearing at this point? What's your attire? Pretty much the same thing. Je jeans and a t-shirt i mean part of the conversation was jermaine's like i'm gonna have you dressed in different i'm gonna have you full hip-hop you're gonna be sagging those pants a little bit lower and i literally looked at him and i said no you're not because hip-hop is expression and this is exactly who i am yeah

and i'm not changing for anybody the only difference between what I wear now and what I wear then probably is I had a giant puffy SoSoDeaf jacket that said scooter. And I used to rock that everywhere because I was proud. But yeah, it was, he gave me an opportunity and took me out of Atlanta. You know, now we were flying to LA and I was watching Usher make confessions and we're flying to Europe. And, you know, I'm seeing the world in a way I never saw before, making relationships that I never had before. And that's why I say all the time, Jermaine Dupri and Steve Rifkind changed my life. You know, Shaq Azulu from Ludacris put me in the game, him, his brother Jeff.

But Jermaine gave me my first big job. And Steve Rifkind gave me my first big record deal when no one else would. And you show up at this time in music where it's officially transitioning from bands and solo artists to just solo artists. And you think about the 2000 to 2005 range was the last time we really created new bands. You had Coldplay, The Strokes, The Killers Kings of Leon that was kind of the last generation and now they're coming back now it's like the nostalgia of that era

is now becoming a thing again Greta Van Fleet, the Spencer Lee band you're starting to see bands really come back in a big way now new bands? these are brand new bands so you think bands are coming back? yeah I hope so.

No, they are. I'm really bored. Brevin Fleet is blowing up, and Spencer Lee Band is blowing up. And these are new bands that are making incredible records that people are really excited about, that really throw back, that feel new, but definitely play off classic rock. Yeah, OK. And people are excited in their live instrumentation,

everything else. Music is cyclical. I hope you're right, because I was worried that bands had played every variation of a band song. No, no. It always works like that. Why do we have new boy bands every couple generations? Because they're so handsome.

Why are you not in a boy band is the real question. I really wanted it. Nobody ever asked me. I was ready. I heard you got moves. Yeah, I was ready. You definitely heard Rog on that. It goes in circles.

And I think that will happen. But also at that time, Maroon 5 was coming out. Because I remember Jermaine was obsessed. Because Maroon 5 was really using breakbeats. Yeah. And I think music goes in these cycles. And I think we're going into a cycle where we're going to see a resurgence of, of bands.

In the Defiant Ones, there's this, this part when Jimmy Iovine, when he hears the chronic and the chronic is just bombing left and right with every person they bring it to and nobody gets it. And he listens to it and he's so impressed by the production. That's why he liked it. It wasn't even the music as much as like,

who produced this? And Dr. J is like, I did. It's like, this is amazing. And that's why he liked it. When you listen to music, are you listening to the music part or the production part? Or what catches your ear first?

Or the person himself or herself? The way I hear music is kind of strange. I hear each instrument. So, and this, I try sometimes to kind of shut my brain off and not pay attention to the music so I can feel what someone would feel like they were just listening in their car.

Yeah. Um, the thing that moves me the most is, is it memorable? Because I got to think commercially. Yeah. Uh, and then two, um, is there soul?

Is there something emotional? Is there feeling when the person sings? Can you grasp something? And I think- Is this why you weep when you hear Sam Smith? He just brings you to tears. But you know what's a really good example? Someone asked me to break that down for them.

And I said, if you listen, Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me, the live version with George Michael and Elton John. Go listen to the studio version with Elton John. Elton John is singing in the studio. It's very safe. Then go listen to the live version and see how he sings after George Michael sings the first verse. Because he gets competitive.

He gets competitive and the emotion comes out. And it is 10 times a better record live than it was in the studio because there was emotion in the voice. And I think that's what moves me the most, because I grew up listening to a lot of different music in my parents' house. And that's why I always loved Michael Jackson, because Michael... Because he'd cry and sucks. Yeah, I mean, he was just, he love Michael Jackson. Cause Michael, cause he cried. Yeah. I mean,

he was just, he was leaving it off every single time. I mean, Michael made you believe every damn word. I mean, he was singing man in the mirror and you're like, yeah, I want to change my life.

Um, that's, that's my favorite Michael Jackson. It's not underrated, but I always feel like it should be in the discussion. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah.

Um, I feel the same way. This is going to sound weird, but in the Grammys, Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand sang You Don't Bring Me Flowers, which is a fine song if you hear it on the radio. But in the Grammys, it's like a moment. And you cried. I didn't cry. You cried.

But you go out and you're like, wow, these two are going to start making out. Everyone remember, Bill Simmons wept while watching Neil Diamond. Everyone remembers. They have so much sexual chemistry. Bill Simmons wept while watching Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand. What a moment. They really took each other to a place. But those authentic moments are harder and harder to find in music because so much of it is orchestrated. And so much of how people put out albums now,

you can kind of see their brain. It's kind of the Taylor Swift-ization people put out albums now you can kind of see their brain it's kind of the taylor swiftization of putting out albums where you can they're putting out the album but you can see all the brain mechanics behind every decision they made before they did it i think timberlake just now jt is the latest example of puts out the man what's it called the man in the woods man of the woods puts out the little weird video first look you never really know because there's a lot of different people behind it sometimes it's the artist

sometimes it's the person behind the artist sometimes it's someone coming up with a random idea when we did the Justin Bieber roast which was our first thing in bringing him back that was an idea from an intern in my office I sat down in the whole office and I said how should I plan out this thing and Ava who now works for me full time was an intern at the time and she said my generation should I, you know, plan out this thing? And Ava, who now works

for me full time, was an intern at the time. And she said, my generation doesn't want to see a sit down interview. We want to see, you know, like a roast. And I said, okay, let's go do a roast. And it was 100% her idea. And, you know, I got a lot of credit for adjusting our credit, but it was really an idea from an intern. And I think... You know what really helped him, though? He put out a couple of songs that were really good. Smashes. Good music heals everything. Guess what?

When you put out a good song that anybody can sing and dance to, what are you going to win? And where are you now? I knew he was back. My daughter was like... When did Sorry come out? How many years ago? Three. Yeah.

So my daughter got into that, like maybe fourth grade. Two or three. God, I can't remember. Yeah, whatever. Fourth grade, fifth grade. And just loved that song. I was like song i was like beebs is back man yeah he's got my nine and a half year old daughter he's good all the sins have washed away but yeah i'm just gonna check with you in this next album i'm gonna be like bring her over we're gonna play her some tunes if she's into it we're solid because that's the way i've always done it i've always actually

gone to fans and tested it. Guess what? If you put out a song that people like, it heals everything. If JT had a song on that last album that was like, wow, that's a great fucking song. That album's fine. Everybody's talking about how good it is. You just need that one. You need the one thing that everyone's around.

People forget it actually is a music business. So they talk about this person and that person and this person. But great music, it really is all it comes down to. That's why I think Off the Wall was a better album than Thriller. And this is very controversial for people. You want to know why? You want me to go there? I mean, I'll listen to it.

I'm not going to agree with you. But go ahead. You want me to tell you why you should? Go ahead. Thriller was an amazing album. But people forget that Michael's first album wasn't off the wall. It was called Michael Forever. It had a green cover, him lying in the grass.

Yeah. And it was a complete flop. And they had to put out another Jackson's album in between because it was such a flop. People forget nobody messed with Michael Jackson. His career was over. It wasn't the Jackson 5. No one was thinking Michael Jackson's going to be this big solo artist yeah and then off the wall came out and it was so amazing that everyone lost their minds and he became michael jackson so when thriller came out he was set up and i always say

the hardest album isn't the album that goes to the next level it's the one that defines you the setup album it's well it's the one that carries you over the hump it's like making the conference finals and who justin bieber was hated but we made purpose and it changed everything and that's why whatever we do next i would still say purpose was more important because it it set everyone up that his next album everyone assumes oh it's going to be a huge smash but everyone assumed on off the wall and on purpose that both of those guys were done. And when an album transcends you from a place of hatred to love, I think that's the more important album. And that is my pitch on why I messed it up. That's an NBA thing.

Yeah. It's the season before the season. 100%. Like the Warriors lose game seven in the Clips. And Steph Curry goes toe-to-toe with Chris Paul. And Klay Thompson is going to another level and I went to that game and I left that game thinking like those guys are going to be special like that there's something's going to happen with that team but I still think you got to win

a championship off the wall was still the championship it just wasn't well Thriller was the Thriller no no off the wall was a huge was 16 and 0 in the playoffs you know listen off the off the wall was a championship without breaking records in games one. Thriller's like, you know, breaking the Scottie Pippen-Michael Jordan team record for wins and winning the championship. Yeah, exactly.

That's what Thriller was, but it doesn't matter because it was them becoming a team the first season before that made you say, okay. So yeah, I think it is basketball. Everything relates to basketball. Everything relates to basketball. Basketball is life was an actual sign in my house.

So it was- Well, even what you said about when you were saying how you can hear an album or a song and you can hear all the different instruments in it. The only thing I can do that with is when I watch a basketball game and I don't even totally have the talent anymore. I used to be able to go to a game and I could see all the different players at the same time and what they were doing. And now, because I don't go to as many games, my brain takes a while for it to come back. But I used to be able to sit there, and I could be like, I see that guy.

I see the kid coming. You see the down screen coming. And everything that was going on, I could just see it. And people hear music that way, and I'm always jealous of it, because just see it and people hear music that way and i'm always jealous of it because i always wish i could hear music that way but i can't you want listen i'll talk basketball all day long the highlight of my career isn't a music thing what is it it's chris paul did a podcast on jesse williams podcast yeah and jesse williams asked him who in the entertainment business can hoop and he he said, Chris Brown. And he said, do you

know Scooter Braun? He has an NBA range jump shot. Wow. And that was the highlight of my career. Everything else. I literally made my office cut that out of a 45 minute podcast and just send it to me so I could send it out to everyone I know. Cause it was Chris Paul. Literally that was the highlight of future hall of famer saying that I have an NBA-level jump shot. And he's right. He's dead on about that. And no one should disagree with him. He's Chris Paul.

Rich Paul has a nice game, too. Yeah, I mean, yeah, sure. Have you played with him? Yeah, I haven't played with Rich. We're buddies. We probably should get on the court and see what happens. He's got a good game. I mean, he's short, but it's like it's effective he uses it's

like speed and quickness he's like he's like mugsy or can he shoot no he's a little better than mugsy he can shoot i like how you said he's better than a guy who had 14 seasons he's better than mugsy bogues who's the starting point guard for the atlanta hops you're right he's probably not better But I guess a more complete offensive game. We were talking about how a good song solves everything. The only time I can remember this not being the case is when Kanye put out Famous, which I thought was one of his best songs that he's ever made.

But there was so much of a circus around it. Hold on, hold on, hold on. That's not true. We had the biggest tour of his entire career. No, I'm saying that song came out in the hullabaloo of the song, overshadowed the song. No, but you know, listen, I think- For me, anyway.

Yeah, I think for you- I just love the song. I was like, why aren't people just talking about what a good song this is? I think, look, Kanye and his family are in the limelight in a way that very few people ever understand like you know they come over for a movie and there are people like just camped outside my house and like paparazzi yeah just paparazzi like with ladders like it's weird and um but but at the end of the day he's an absolute creative genius and i think that that album uh life of pablo is the first album that only was

released streaming that ever went number one on the billboard chart yeah and the tour that he did with the floating stage you know that tour is the biggest tour of his entire career it's the best show i think i've ever been to as far as the energy and everything else um and chris rock came and he was like at the garden and he was like i Chris Rock came at the Garden, and he was like, I've seen everyone play the Garden. This is the best show I've ever seen. Wow. And the genius is Kanye.

So we're in- Wait, hold on. Let's take a break because I have a lot of Kanye. Okay. All right, taking a break. Has your company outgrown QuickBooks, our shared spreadsheets, manual processes, and legacy systems costing you time and money?

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When do you meet Kanye? This is Kanye's. I have a lot of Kanye thoughts. So I wanted that. I'm going to be careful how much I say out of respect for him. Give me the whole history. Kanye and I met originally on the Ludacris stand-up video. He had just signed to Rockefeller.

He was a producer. Wasn't an artist yet, as far as putting out music. Did he know John Legend yet? No. OK. I mean, I don't think so. And he was at the video. And I'm starring in the video.

And he does a cameo in the video because he's the producer of the song. And we met on the side, kind of talking to each other. And then I did Music Midtown in Atlanta. I consulted for them, and I booked all the stages, and I booked Kanye, and we hung out there. And we kind of just saw each other over the years, because he had a manager at the time, John Monopoly,

who always looked out for me, who knew me from my parties, and just was always a good dude who kind of looked out for me when he didn't need to. And then years later,ye puts out that tweet saying he's 56 million dollars in debt and i'm his friend so i called him just to say are you okay no business nothing uh and then we started talking and he's like you should manage me be part of this team i said i don't want to manage you i just want to be your friend what year are we talking here this is about two and a half years ago okay uh and i said i don't want to do that i just want to be your buddy and uh literally a week later i said when

you get back in town in two weeks we'll sit down and talk and see how i can help you out but it wasn't like work together and i get a phone call two days later from def jam and from adidas both saying we were told to talk to you that you're kan's manager. And I call him up and I'm like, dude, what the hell? And he's like, I don't have time to wait. You're it. You're in. And I became his manager from that point on. We started co-managing with Izzy.

And we've been managing Kanye for two years. So the famous tour was huge. Which I mean, I always joke around because he will be one of my favorite people forever. Like we're, he's my brother from this point on um and i joke around like i could be with him for 10 years or i could be like done next week and we're back to being friends like well my fear is like he just never makes another album listen it's conceivable right i think that will be up to him right but i'm not gonna go there i'm not gonna give any hints that will completely be up to him i'm not saying you'm not going to go there. I'm not going to give any hints. That will completely be up to him. I'm not saying you have to give hints.

I'm just saying as somebody who enjoys him, my fear is like he'll never make another album. That'll be it. He'll just do other stuff. We'll see. Yeah, remember when Kanye made music? Yeah, we'll see. Oh, yeah, that was great.

We'll see. You know one of the moments, I was telling you about this floating stage, when I was like, he is an absolute genius. Yeah. So we're doing rehearsals for two days before the show opens in the Midwest. And all we have is a floating stage. Like we talked about doing a B stage where he comes down for a little bit.

And right now, all he wants is the floating stage going back and forth and kind of the spaceship moment. And, you know, Izzy and I are talking about we should have a B stage prepared in case he wants to add a couple shows in. In case like this doesn't carry, you know, Izzy and I are talking about we should have a B stage prepared in case he wants to add a couple shows in, in case this doesn't carry for two hours. And I see Kanye walk out to the middle of the floor, and he takes a phone, and he's looking down, and he's shooting pictures. And Kanye's not a selfie guy. Yeah. So I'm like, what is he doing? So I walk over and I ask him.

And he says, I'm taking selfies to see what the fans will be doing, what what it looks like to make sure it's right because I'm building the show for them. And he knew the culture of where kids are today and what they like and what they do. And he built a show that would be shot by their iPhones better than any other show before it. And he had that innately in his mind. And he was absolutely right. We never needed to be staged. The show was crazy. I mean, we could have gone for 200 more shows if we didn't have to stop it after that tour. But it was, if you ask me, I love all the shows I'm involved with.

But that tour is something that I wish was still going on so more people could see what would take place night after night it was crazy and it was all out of his mind so you don't think you don't see him touring again anytime soon no I think he could tour again I'm just saying that tour specifically he'll build something new but that tour was just the greatest thing I ever saw in my life so it was the floor would rock. Like people were moving, jumping up and down at such a rate, like the whole place. The crowd was as much part of the show as he was. Yeah.

And it was, anyone who went, it was like a kinship. Did you go? Yeah. It was like a kinship between us that we were there, that we could like look at each other and be like, you were there, you experienced that. It's like when you talk to people who went into Burning Man. You know, they could like look at each other and be like you were there you experienced that it's like when you talk to people who went to burning man you know they kind of look at each other like the playa will provide you know like or uh you know whatever it is and you know they have this kinship that people who don't go to burning man do you think live music

matters as much as it did because like yeah when i was growing up, like let's take Bruce Springsteen. He put out an album. You bought it. He came through your town. You either saw him or you didn't. And that was it. Those were my Bruce Springsteen interactions. You might come on the radio.

Now it's like, you told me about that Kanye thing. I could go on YouTube and watch it right now. Yeah, but it's not the same. No, I know it's not, but I wonder if people... I think people know that. I hope you're right. That's why these shows are selling out. That's why festivals have come back in such a big way.

I think people want live experiences because there's so much behind their phone and so much behind their computers that they're desperately trying to break out. And I think that what we saw in our most recent election, and we've seen such a divide, millennials are more socially conscious than any other generation before. And that's what all the data says. And I think they want to feel and touch and experience each other because they're so upset with what they've been given and what they're being told

about the world they're coming into. So I actually think live music is on the rise, not on the fall. Why do you think that all the stuff going on in this country hasn't a hundred percent been reflected in the music yet? Because you've seen this in the seventies. Yeah. I'll be honest with you. It's as frustrating to me as probably it is to you.

You know, in the seventies it was reflected every single day. By everybody. A hundred percent. If you look at the civil rights movement you think the drugs just aren't good enough now i think the drugs you know i think i think i think it's because um artists are very sensitive people you know creative people are very sensitive um and there's just too many data points with social media. Before, you could walk in a march, and you felt like you were surrounded by people, and you felt strong in that moment. And now with social media, you have 100 different opinions hitting you all at once.

And for many of them, it's paralyzing. But I think that what we're going to see, and my hope, is that more and more artists are starting to speak out in a way they haven't before. And I think that people are going to realize they want to be on the right side of history. And they're going to start using their voices. And I'm hoping the music starts to reflect it as well. It's also because back then, radio stations were more regional. So you had a lot of PDs, program directors, taking risks. And now these companies become huge conglomerates,

where it's like four people making the decision of what plays on every radio station around the country. And I think that I don't necessarily know if we're going to see it on radio, but I think we're going to see it in streaming. You know, we're going to see artists breaking through because that's where kids are now finding new music because you're not finding on a radio with four people programming the whole country. Yeah. My generation, you bought albums. I remember remember eight tracks i had a couple eight tracks cds you should you should give an eight track to your kid and tell them say how do you use these to carry these around yeah and just see what your daughter does like i think i might still have my

holonotes h2o a track yeah you should listen someone gave a cassette tape to their kid it's on youtube it's funny cassettes. Forgot about those. And the kids were looking through them, and they were like, well, how do you plug it in? And they were so confused, and I felt so old. It was very upsetting to me. Well, so then it switches this decade. Now it's almost like the playlist era. And I like Kanye.

I have, I don't know, 32 songs of my favorite Kanye songs. They're just in a thing. You hit shuffle and they pop up. And he's one of the last people who actually tried to make albums. Now you see the way they put out that last one, where he basically streamed it out. He's tweaking it after it's up. The Life of Pablo is a living album.

Yeah, it was a living breathing album for how many months like a while going i mean look if he wanted to if he said call me up tomorrow and said i want to change a mix and or add a remix or something like that we would call and make the change it's a that's why it was a life of pablo it's living breathing changing album so is that where we're going look i don't i don't know where we're going. I think I just, what happens is you and I get to an age where we're old. Yep. I'm already there, by the way. Okay.

You're not there yet, but I am there. I think I'm there. I think I'm there. I'm starting to see it with my interns. I'm there. Yeah. I might take a break. You had an A-track, so I agree with you.

You're there. I have A-tracks. I saw Bob Seger in 1980. I'm old. Yeah. I was born in 1981. Yeah, there you go. I'm old. Yeah, I was born in 1981. Yeah, there you go. I'm old.

So I think what happens is we start to say the criticisms of how we see things. Yeah. And the next generation revolts and shows us the exact opposite, which happens every single generation. You know, everything in my life I've found has been like a microcosm of something else. It's like when I learned how to promote parties, I can use all those skills in my life I've found has been like a microcosm of something else. It's like when I learned how to promote parties, I can use all those skills in my business now. What I learned on the basketball court, I can use in my life now. What I see from history, it repeats itself.

It's like Coretta Scott King said, every generation has to fight the fight all over again. I think that's whether it be social activism or the music industry or it's just every generation has to figure it out for themselves. And usually what a lot of things that drive them is our criticism of them. You know, and I think... It's much easier to criticize than it was 35 years ago, but it was still there 35 years ago.

100%. Why did Michael Jackson have to go crazy? I don't know. It's, yeah, it's... Why do most people who have a ton of success before you want me to tell you why age of 25 yeah because well you had you you had bieber yeah who you're in from the ground floor on and he's we've turned around massive success at age what 16 17 yeah so we through his entire teenage years he's the most Googled person on the planet. Yeah, that's not healthy. And now he's going to turn 24, and he's an extremely healthy kid.

But almost wasn't. Almost wasn't. We had two years that were horrible where I would go to sleep at night wondering if he was still going to be there, and I was trying to find him, but he had $100 million that could run away. Yeah. Look, I think Justin figured out something that we talk about all the time that is the only reason he did not go crazy.

And that is that we... I'm going to get spiritual on you here. No, let's do it, man. Okay. I don't think human beings were made to be worshipped. I think we were made to serve. I think we worship something upstairs, whatever it may be. I respect anybody for their beliefs.

But there's something bigger than us that can be worshipped. I think as human beings, we're here to serve each other. And that's the only way we can keep our sanity. We hear all the time of a Fortune 100 CEO killing themselves. And we're like, oh, I can't believe with everything they had, they would kill themselves. But we're not surprised. But if I was to tell you, hey, there was a lifetime volunteer at a soup kitchen who killed themselves, you'd be like, that makes no sense to me. I've never heard of anything like that. And it's because people who serve don't go crazy.

People who give back don't go crazy. And people who don't, who just take and take and take and are worshiped and are just receiving, they lose their mind because they don't know where to give anything. So I think with celebrity, when you live far away by yourself and the whole world is just praising you all the time, Michael was probably at his happiest when he was helping people. But he was so alienated, he probably lost his mind. And he abused himself and all these different things but i i can't speak to that i didn't know him but i know from my own experience dealing with celebrity at the highest level yeah the only way you survive is if you have an outlet to give the only way success like real crazy success i think also has its own demon where you spend your you spend all this time trying to get to where you think you want to go and that's happening you think about kanye how

he started kanye is probably the all-time starting from nothing doing everything possible to even get his first album justin too yeah justin yeah justin justin lived in the projects with a single mom who had him when she was 17 years old yeah and no one in his family had ever been on an airplane let alone left the town everyone in his family had substance abuse issues and the first time i flew him and his mother to atlanta was the first time she had ever been on an airplane wow you know so he and i were joking the other day because he took his mom to a private island in the maldives for vacation and i was like do you know the first time i brought you to atlanta when i picked you up do you know what you were freaking out about?

That there was a refrigerator in your hotel room. And there's so many stories in Hollywood or in sports of people coming from nothing to something. But go ahead. I'm sorry I interrupted your question. I was just going to say that I think when you spend all this time trying to achieve something and then you actually achieve it, I think most of the time people look around and go, oh, fuck, this didn't make me 100% happy. I had that experience.

That's when they kind of lose their shit. Yeah, I had that experience. And I got really good advice. What was it? When I got to Atlanta and I decided I was going to business, I wanted to be a billionaire. I was like, I'm going to be a billionaire. And then I started. Because you wanted to buy an NBA team.

Yeah. Actually, I was like, that sounds good. But after probably a month, I realized making five grand was really hard. Yeah. And being a billionaire was not a reasonable thing in my mind. And I met a guy who I had a life I wanted. He had the wife, the kids, the dog, the little whaler boat on Lake Lanier. Like I was like, this dude has it. Like he's the man. And I went and sat down with him and I said, how much to have your life? Like how much money do I need to make to be comfortable in this life?

And he gave me an extremely high, but reasonable number. Like a number I felt like I could achieve. It wasn't close to a billions. It wasn't even hundreds of millions. Yeah. And I was like, I'm going to work to my 50s, 60s to get to this number and have this life. And that was my number.

I was 20 years old. I set my number 2021. 27 years old. I'm driving by Cactus Car Wash in Atlanta, Georgia on Piedmont Road. And my accountant calls me to say something came in, investment, whatever it was, commissions. And he says, you know, just want to let you know it came in. Congratulations. And I said, cool, thanks. I hung up the phone and I thought about it. I called Congratulations. And I said, cool, thanks. I hung up the phone, and I thought about it. I called him back. I said, how much money do I have?

And he said, what do you mean? I said, across all my accounts, how much cash do I have right now after taxes? And he named a number higher than my lifetime number. I was 27. And that's when you tried heroin. What happened was I kept driving for like a second, and then I called my dad. And I tell my dad what I was just told. And it's a strange thing.

You're calling your father to say, hi, your 28, 7-year-old son is the wealthiest person in the family. Yeah. And my dad is like, that's amazing. Oh, my God. And I said, but dad, here's the problem. I thought when I got here, I'd be happy. And it's not that I was happy or sad. My life just continued driving past Cactus Car Wash.

Yeah. And then when it hit me that nothing changed in my emotions, I got incredibly depressed. Yeah. And my dad gave me the best advice in the world. He thought about it. He goes, do me a favor. I want you to hang up the phone. Think about when you were genuinely happy over the last year.

And then I want you to call me back. And I was like, what? He's like, just do it. Hung up the phone, pulled over the car, thought about it for a couple minutes, called my dad back. And I was like, okay, it's going to sound crazy. But when I'm just sitting at night hanging out with my boys,

when I'm playing ball, when you get hot on the court, hit a couple threes in a row. I was like, when I go to a children's hospital, when I'm answering somebody randomly back on Facebook and answering their question, and my dad goes, look, where you are now, you're in a place where you can have success. Success isn't money. Success is freedom to do the things that you actually love. He was like, so implement more of those things into your life and you'll get happiness. And as you get more money, you can implement more and more and more. And goes back to what I said before about serving. At the end of the day, I'm happiest when I'm participating with other people. When I take away money, when I take away all these things, I've had lots of amazing, happy moments before I ever made money.

And the more moments like that, the happier I am. And what I realize is we get older, we get in this place where we have to provide. And we got to go to the job every single day. And that's why we start to get broken down because we're taking more and more time away from what actually makes us happy. And then we get to a place where you make the money and you're continuing in the rat race. And you're like, what the hell did I do this for? And I want people to have the perspective that you can make a lot of money or not make a lot of money, but that it doesn't define your happiness. Your choice of balance in your

life designs your happiness. The choice of how much you want to give to others, the choice of those friends and family you want to spend time with. If you make the conscious decision to do that anyway, I mean, what's the point of making money to go on vacation, go on vacation to spend quality time with people. You can implement more of that in your life right now. I'm in a fortunate position where I don't ever need to work ever again. I'm doing it because I need the challenge. That is part of my happiness. But at the same time, if I don't get home to put my kids to sleep because I decided to stay for a meeting, I'm an asshole. I try to get home every night to put my boys to sleep because I know when they go

to sleep, I can kiss my wife and say, I got to go do this and I can go back out. But I'm not going to miss those years because the whole point of me doing all this was to have that in the first place. Yeah. We're going to take a break. Hey, for all you guys that love discovering cool ass new products that you just can't find everywhere, I need to tell you about bespokepost.com. Bespoke Post, a subscription club that offers monthly themed boxes curated from unique and upcoming brands around the world. A wide variety of box themes, including style, grooming, cooking, drinking, traveling.

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a relationship with a State Farm agent sets you up for success. Off the court, go to StateFarm.com to get an agent that gets you. Back to my best friend, Scooter Braun. All right, so you've worked with a bunch of uniquely talented people. Do any of them have a common thread or a common DNA strand or a common something? Or is it each situation is totally different?

I mean, there's a lot of things you can compare in their lives because a lot of them are living these really crazy lives. But I think each situation is really different. Yeah. Each person is different. Each personality is different. Each family dynamic is different. You know, even the age differences in some of them make things very different. Does there have to be a certain level of competitiveness to get that level?

Yeah. I think you got to be slightly narcissistic to be a superstar yeah you know i would say more than slightly you know it's very similar to sports yeah you know it's like um i got to meet michael jordan for the first time a couple years back and he was everything i expected him to be like he wanted to kill me in a conversation you know like and i was like this dude is the most competitive human being ever. We were talking Duke versus UNC and he was so aggressive. Yeah.

But, you know, and you watch these interviews with Kobe where he was like, I'm not there to be nice to you. I'm there to kill you. And I think the same thing with superstars. I mean, if I always say, if you want to know someone's a superstar, imagine them going into a room and it's a club and there's like a microphone and they're like, oh, I'm not going to sing tonight. They're playing it cool. But then other artists start to sing. If they're like playing it cool, they're not probably in the mode of being a superstar. Either they've already become it or they're not on the way up. They need to dominate every room that they go into and very similar to basketball you could put you could put anybody in a pickup game and put kobe bryant in a pickup game he's not just gonna

let you just play with kobe bryant he's gonna mess you up i used to believe in this theory especially with the all-star game when the allStar game mattered, it was a great way you watched the game unfold, and eventually there's alpha dogs on both sides because that's just how basketball works. Now they don't play. Two things happen. One, they don't play as hard. And two, there's been that kind of Kobe slash Westbrook. I'm just shooting every time, but I don't know if that necessarily means you're the alpha dog or just a baller.

And also guys don't want to get hurt. There's a lot of money on the line. Guys don't want to get hurt. So West a lot of guys don't want to get hurt. So Westbrook's playing 15% harder than everybody else. I don't know if that makes them the alpha dog, but I'm with you. Like basketball, the Olympics are good for this.

Dude, the Michael Jordan, magic Johnson secret game. Oh yeah. But the 2000, 2008 Olympics, when, where were they in Greece and Spain is kind of coming at them.

And it's this weird, they're between two generations. And at some point, somebody had to take over the game. I think it was Chris Paul. Well, it became Kobe. No, that was 2012. 2012, Chris Paul took over that game when they needed him. 2008, it was Kobe. It was Kobe, right.

What's weird is it was never LeBron. In either of those situations. But yeah, in 08, Kobe's like, I got this. And everybody's like, thank God Kobe's got this. And in 12, it was Chris Paul in London. Yeah, Chris Paul in London. I remember he took over. He kind of got to a place where he was like, this isn't going down like this.

I got this. I'm taking over this game. Yeah, there needs to be an I got this guy. So yeah, with music, I can only imagine imagine i'm a nicks fan growing up we we're in use when i got this guy we need one you've needed it i got this guy now i got this guy just towards acl poor guy we lost our unicorn for the season you know it was a great one when uh the one of the rock and roll hall of fames when prince came in that one? They're all playing guitar. And then Prince came in and was like, fuck you guys.

And just blew everybody off the stage. I think it's tougher, though, with where music is now, where everybody's kind of an individual. You know, it's hard. No, you still see the killer instinct. I mean, here's the thing. It's very different, because music is, as much as you need the killer instinct, like you learned from the Michael Jordan years when Phil started sitting him in the third quarter,

that you have to develop the other players to win a championship. You gotta have to have, everyone has to have confidence in their ability when their time comes. And it's a team sport. And the same thing as music. Music's very collaborative. You need to kind of everyone,

but there still is that killer instinct in everything in life that goes a long way. But at the same time, it can help you. It can also destroy you still is that killer instinct in everything in life that goes a long way. Yeah. But at the same time, it can help you. It can also destroy you because if you really believe it's all you, you don't win championships. You know, if you have the killer instinct, but you're able to lift up everyone around you while doing it,

because that was the thing that made Michael so great, you know, towards the end of his career and all those championships, he got to a place where he figured that out. Before it was, I'm going to score 60, you know, 60 points on Larry and lose. I have to dominate you. Yeah. But he would lose. Yeah.

And then it got to a point of like, I'm going to, I'm still going to be Michael, but everyone on this court is accountable to the same effort and work that I'm putting in. And I'm going to lift everybody up with. And then turn it on when you need to. Yeah, and then six championships. Yeah. And so, and by the way, no one talks the fact that scotty pippen also like basically averaged a triple double almost well that scotty pippen was an mvp that candidate that one year jordan sat down he had like basically

almost a triple double that season he was awesome and lost to the knicks in game seven i preached to the choir of pippen he's. He's one of my historical guys. I agree. Pippen is one of the greatest. It is funny now. I've noticed, and I know this is a cranky old guy thing, but especially at the ringer, we have a lot of younger people. Two of them are in the room right now.

Although these two are bad examples because they actually understand basketball history. But there is a sense like people, I can feel it with the under 30s where their basketball history kind of starts with kobe and like kobe and shack it's like the first thing they can remember and that and there's this whole generation of fans now who just weren't there for jordan much less same way i wasn't there for julius irving right i didn't really know anything about julius i wasn't there for bill russell so I had to just kind of trust the stories.

Yeah, the Bernard King story is always one of my favorites, and I wasn't there for that. The return, when he came back into the game. Because as a Knicks fan, you heard that lore. But I mean...

Well, that was one of my... The 84 Celts went against Bernard, and it was basically just Bernard and a bunch of... Not scrubs, but none of them were all-stars or anything. And the Celtics had this five Hall of Famers.

And Bernard just went toe-to-toe with them. He took them to a game seven. That season, he was a beast. He was unbelievable. He was a beast. The only two New York athletes I've ever rooted for were him and Doc Gooden. Doc Gooden?

I just got caught up in it. Doc Gooden in the mid-'80s was just otherworldly. There was nobody like him. It was like just otherworldly there was nobody like him you know it was like 16 17 strikeouts um where do you see music going what's next look i think you'll see a resurgence of rock um so rock bands you think are coming back i think rock bands will come about socially conscious music uh i'm hoping so who's who's our best bet because kendrick kind of already put out the album before the election even happened, which if he just held it a year, it would have been like, oh, that album's about to be released.

I don't know who our best bet is. It might be songs. It might be a movement. I just don't believe in one artist starting a movement. That's what I learned in Atlanta. It never is one artist. It's a group of artists coming together and being collaborative and moving the needle together.

And I think that that maybe it's a we we are the world type situation maybe you have to get together like 30 of these maybe i should put them all together in a room yeah get them in a room do something you know what i what i'm hoping for i want people to be socially conscious but i don't even want the artist versus trump thing i just want people to start understanding the same people they're yelling at or the people they're claiming to help you know that's what that's the big thing like we keep talking about fight fight fight but who the hell are we fighting each other and i'm just very frustrated by this like i got asked a question in billboard a couple weeks ago and they said what

was the biggest story in our industry last year and my response was i don't really care we're not that important compared to what's actually going on yeah and you know my my hope is that you know artists who are actually willing to educate themselves speak up, and other ones, I don't want them to use their platform. If you're in your own world and you're not actually socially conscious, you can do more harm than good, and I'd rather you just stay quiet. But I think what's next for music is I think we're going to see a lot of new things be discovered because the gatekeepers are getting taken away even more

and more things are being discovered on streaming with this next generation. How worried should I be about the Logan Paul, Jake Paul type of music? Because unfortunately, my kids... I wouldn't be worried. Somebody asked me if... I wouldn't be worried because that is... Abuse of your platform can only last so long and and unfortunately

he's a young guy and him and his brother are are learning that the hard way and i don't wish bad on anybody i hope they figure it out but at the end of the day you can't um can't be so disrespectful and keep thinking it's funny. My fear is that my kids, somebody asked me, will my kids remember Logan and Jake Paul like kids in the late 80s or remember the Beastie Boys where they know all the songs

and like 15 years from now, they're at a party and somebody starts singing a Logan Paul song and they know all the words. And I'm like, God, not only do I not hope that happens, but I'm willing to do whatever brainwashing it takes to eliminate those people from their brains. But unfortunately, that is where people are getting a lot of music.

And it has good outcomes. Like Justin Bieber, that's how people found him, YouTube. And then some not so great stuff. Listen, I'm constantly worried about my two sons being dicks because they're growing up in a very different lifestyle than I did and especially the generation before me. Yeah. And the best someone told me, they're like,

as long as you're concerned about it, probably it's going to work itself out. How old are your sons? My sons are three and one. Oh, so you have a long way to go before you start having the philosophical parent questions about language and songs. Yeah. My wife's the founder of fuck cancer. So I think that's going to work itself out. My attitude is my, my kids can, can hear the words, but I don't want them singing along like they know how to self-edit when the whatever bad word comes up yeah no i that was the way i kind of grew up yeah i don't want to hear

them in my back seat like dropping f-bombs and well you know you could tell them as soon as they start you can say who sings this song and then they'll tell you and then you can respond with let's keep it that way. That's usually my response. That's a good one. That's what I tell people when I don't like them singing songs. I go, who sings this? They say it, and I go, cool, let's keep it that way. Do you know my connection with Kanye and my daughter?

My daughter plays club soccer and has played for like five years, but when we drove to tournaments, because in California, you're just driving around everywhere, she would have a playlist to get like fired up for whatever the game was or whatever and from like age eight it was it was just pretty much all kanye and you know we're pulling up in these parking lots and it'll be like halfway through runaway and we pull up in this you know there's some minivan next to us. And people are kind of looking at our car. I'm like, oh, shit.

And I'm like turning it down. But I think it's crazy. Meanwhile, if you kept it up, they'd be like, yeah. I think it's crazy that somebody can make music like that that can touch everybody. He's a genius. I don't think I'm in the kanye wheelhouse really i'm a guy in my mid-40s and i have a daughter who's now 12 but um but i think that's i think

history is going to remember him yeah i i personally and i'm very biased because i'm close with him i think he's a living icon like i think he think he's one of those people that after death will be remembered for a long time, and he's living right now. Do you agree with what I said about him, that I think Kanye is a genius, but the problem is he knows that? I see it very differently. Okay. I don't see it as a problem that he knows that,

because I get to have the real conversations with him in a way other people might never get to have. Yeah. And the way I look at it is so many of us, it's like looking at a painting. And if you're too close to the painting, you might see a couple of brushstrokes and be like, I don't get it. And I think with Kanye, when it's all said and done, we're going to be able to step back and realize everything he does is art. Yeah. And he's fighting for that. How many years away are we from that?

I think some of us see it now, and that's why we fight so vehemently as fans of his. I see it now. I just don't fight. Maybe I should fight more. Well, I think you're on a podcast talking about him a lot, so you're fighting. So I think history will prove exactly who he is. When's the last honest conversation you had with somebody publicly? Like, would he ever come on this podcast?

You'd have to ask him. But does he do stuff like that? Does he care? Does he care to even have a conversation? When he wants to have a conversation when he when he wants to have a conversation yeah but i think you know it's we have honest conversations all the time um i just think he uh he lives by his convictions and he makes his own decisions and he might do this he might not do this like it's just kind of up to him give me two predictions of people who

are on the horizon that you are not involved with in any way that you're just why would i do that let me only tell you who i'm involved with um grandman fleet is a new band that i'm not involved with that i think is on on the rise um the spencer lee band oh you mentioned those yeah i'm invent i'm involved. And I said it anyway, because you have to listen to just two of the songs that are out and you'll be like, holy shit, I'll play them for you before I leave.

And I mean, there's a lot of great new artists. We'll see what happens over the next year. You dug that question. Best NBA rapper. Best NBA rapper. Would you sign an nba rapper um well no because they can't tour they're they're playing in the nba all the time um well they could tour during the summer yeah maybe a little two-month tour yeah maybe a two-month tour or in damian lillard's case like a six-month damian lillard's good they usually don't damian lillard's good yeah he's good Damian Lillard is he the best one right now I don't

know you know what I haven't I'm not gonna lie to you I haven't really dived into the NBA rap scene that's bullshit no I know I need to you said you love basketball I love basketball your two worlds I understand and and I need to I need to dive into the NBA rap scene I've been too busy actually watching them play basketball um can I tell you one of my favorite teams to watch in the NBA rap scene. I've been too busy actually watching them play basketball. Can I tell you one of my favorite teams to watch in the NBA, though? Please. The Miami Heat. They're weird. It's a weird team. You know why? A lot of weird players. All hard. Pick up team, everybody

tries hard. Everybody plays hard, and they're capable of beating anybody on any given night. It's one of many teams that can beat the Celtics in round one. They're a team that plays hard any given night. It's one of many teams that can beat the Celtics in round one. They're a team that plays hard every single night. They play together. They seem to like each other.

They shouldn't be good. And I fell in love with them last year when they were chasing to try and get into the playoffs and they got that one game away. They won and then the other team won so they didn't get in. I think they would have beaten the South. They're just one of those teams that they're fun to watch because they remind me of a less talented Pistons with Chauncey and Rip.

Like a poor man's 0-4 Pistons. Yeah. It was an amazing championship pistons team yeah but they were good because they played incredibly well together against a bunch of guys who are better and more talented than them but they played as a team like that was a great team basketball to watch and the heat are even less talented yeah and i'm actually i'm happy if the d-way gets to retire there i think that's a nice thing. I think he retired three years ago. Disappointing career, D Wade.

Tommy over there has some tormented D Wade thoughts. He went to the Bulls for $24 million a year. He did what he had to do. So what's next for you? You know, I'm taking Chris Paul's advice. I think I'm going to try out next year for the league celebrity league no no no the real league the real league i'm gonna try and pull a master p

could you beat kyle corver uh in a three-point contest yeah any given day you never know with shooters right why don't you just show up at these gyms and bet these guys on shooting contest what do you think i want to do by the way white guys on shooting what do you think jermaine dupri used to do with me back in the day to make money? He used to literally have rappers come to work in the studio. So you're like, white men can't jump. And he would bring me in like Woody Harrelson.

Yeah. And I would wear like cargo shorts. And just take money all... I need more playing basketball at the Soso Def Gym than I probably did in my salary. What's your game like? I'm just a shooter. Well, but give me a comparison, NBA comparison.

My favorite player growing up was Mark Price. Oh, one of my favorites. Mark Price was my guy. He killed the Celtics in 1992. We would have been up 3-1 in the series and he just killed us. He had a lightning quick release. He was Nash before Nash. He hurt his knee.

Yeah. And so I'm a shooter. I'm a guy, really like in AAU basketball, I was the guy. I go in as a three-point specialist. And that was always my game. If I make a layup, it's a miracle. Because I'm even attempting a layup. It's amazing the Cavs didn't sign you. They three-point specials yeah it's like gotten a whole

bunch i had a lot of you know watching the mark prices the steve kerr's like little white guys who shot threes that made me feel real good about myself does kanye have a game or no kanye can kanye's an athlete so he like and he loves basketball he loves playing what is it what is his pickup play uh you know who's the best I've ever played against in the entertainment business? Who? Ali from the St. Lunatics. Ali, Nelly's guy, Ali from the St. Lunatics is like 6'5", 6'4", 6'5". He was all city St. Louis.

Wow. And he can play. He can really play. And I used to play. Lou Williams used to, when he was in high school, he was friends with Bow Wow, and he used to come over to the So So Def gym and play with us all the time. So I've known him since he was 17.

Who else? Give me more. J. Will and I grew up together, like playing against each other in team camps. No, I meant like musicians. Oh, musicians who can play. I play with Adam Levine a bunch. We have games at Adam's house.

Adam's a pure lefty. Does he have one of those like lefty he's a lefty he loves going like hard to the hole with the left hand that's such an advantage for pickup yeah

because people get tired they just forget you're lefty I'm trying to think who else is good Titty Boy Common can play oh yeah

Common can play I love that you called him Titty Boy and not 2 Chainz that's how I know him I know him from the Lud. I love that you called him Titty Boy and not 2 Chainz. That's how I know him. I know him from the Ludacris days. It's Titty Boy.

DTP. Yep, DTP. He could play. I'm telling you, the best was Ali from the St. Lunatics. Ali from the St. Lunatics could shoot. He could play. He was really, really, really good. Is there any Jay-Z basketball?

I've never played with Jay. He probably does, right? Unless he's great, there's nothing for him to win with. Yeah, I guess. I've literally never played with him before. Do you think Tidal works? I got invited to the White House to play with Obama, got so excited, showed up, and he wasn't in the game. Oh!

I was like, what is this? Literally, I was hyped for the whole day. I was in D.C., went over there. And he wasn't there. It was kind of a letdown. Do you think Tidal and that whole philosophy and that whole practice of this is the only place to hear our music is a good idea? No, I think, look, I don't think exclusivity works in music. I don't think it does either.

I think that that's why Spotify has become the biggest, because they don't care about exclusivity works in music i don't think it does i think that uh that's why spotify has become the biggest because they don't care about exclusivity they just care about giving the best platform and apple kind of did the same thing and i think um music can be ripped too easily so you just gotta you know give the best place for self-discovery and give that same feeling when you went into a vinyl store or a track or whatever you know it was or i found a mixtape we felt this feeling of self-discovery that when that artist blew up we felt like we owned them when we were there forever yeah and i think whichever platforms provide that the wins it's not about having the biggest artist with the exclusive album it's about where where am i going to find what i fall in love with and make my own

you know the nba even though they have nothing in common in this respect, they actually do. Because the NBA was always like, here's our stuff. Use it the way you want. Oh, you want to cut the Giannis' best dunks of the year? We're not going to take it down. They kind of try to celebrate the game. And they let the users celebrate the game with them. And it worked.

And you think basketball Twitter every night is an event in itself, and anytime something happens, you can find it on Twitter in five seconds. Whereas football, it's like coming down, coming down, take that down, take this down, oh, we don't like this. And I think the inclusiveness of what basketball is doing and what seems to be working in music seems to be some parallels. I think there's a lot of parallels.

I think at the end of the day, the user is the one who's providing all the revenue anyway. So if you try to cut them off from being a creator, you lose. How many views is Despacito up to? A lot. We just crossed a billion streams on Spotify. A billion streams, and it's like, how many on YouTube?

I haven't even looked. It's massive. It's over a billion, I think. Yeah, yeah. It's massive. Do you remember when you first heard that song? Yeah, they sent it to me to remix it with other artists, not Justin. And I cut a deal for my company to own the remix,

and I would handle putting together a remix. And then justin was in south america and he heard the song and he's like man girls are going crazy for this i said well i have the remix rights if you want to do it i want you have to do it this week and we like talked about i sent pubera writer we managed in to write the english part um justin said i'm going to do it in spanish and i said great that's what i think so too we talked about i said be good for latin market he sends it going to do it in Spanish. And I said, great. That's what I think. So, too, we talked about it. I said, we good for Latin market. He sends it back to me. It sounds great. I'm really excited.

I send it in. The radio guys call. The label calls. Luis Fonzi himself reaches out. We want Justin to do it in English. We were hoping this would be an English version that we can get played on English radio. And I said, we're not doing that. And I said, don't you remember what happened with Nina and 99 Luftballons? Well, first, you know what I did say? What I said is I did Gangnam Style

with Psy. And I said, if I can get a song in Korean all over the radio, I can get a song in Spanish. Yeah, that's a good one. And then I also, I said, it's really important we keep this in Spanish. And they said, well, and I said, look, I'm putting it on me. We're going to work it. My guy, Mike Chester in my office, like, we're going to work it putting it on me we're gonna work it my guy mike chester in my office like we're gonna work it with you and we're gonna break this with you and if i'm wrong we'll do it in english but i'm not wrong we're doing it in spanish and i said we have a responsibility to do this in spanish because i felt like over the last year there's so many american citizens who speak that language in their home and they felt less than and i wanted to get a number one on the radio that they could hear their native tongue

and feel appreciated. And I was hoping to get it to number one for a week. I didn't expect it to go 16 weeks, but it was pretty awesome. You said three days from now, I'm going to call you back with four 12 year old girls who have never heard this song before. And I want you to hear their reactions

and they're going to lose their fucking minds. Once it went, there was no stopping it. It was just making people understand. I literally had to curse on one phone call and say, it's not changing to fucking English. Stop asking me. I always find out with pop music belatedly from my kids in the car when they tell me to put something on.

And that one I knew right away. I heard like a minute and a half of it. I was like, oh my god, this song's a monster. How do you make money from a song like that though? Other than that, like. I mean, you get paid for every stream. Yeah, but explain that to me. How do you chase it down?

We have companies that do that for you. They're chasing down Spotify, Apple. The reason you sign with a major and a major publisher is their responsibility is to chase down the money and pay you. How confident are you that you're getting all the money? I audit. So yeah, that's how I'm confident. I audit and you that you're getting all the money? I audit. So yeah,

that's how I'm confident. I audit and make sure that I get all the money. So is it safe to say that song made a ridiculous amount of money? The song did very well. Did very well? Yeah, it did very well. Like very well? Like, can you buy the New Orleans Pelicans? I don't know. Throw your hat in the ring right now. Let's make some news. You know what? I'm good on owning an NBA team if I live in Los Angeles

because I don't want to fly all the way to New Orleans okay so the Lakers and I don't think Despacito made me that much money

at some point maybe you know what you're a minority owner I got I got offered to do that a couple years ago and I almost did it the Hawks and yeah the Hawks they wanted offered to do that a couple years ago and i almost did it the hawks and uh yeah the hawks they wanted me to do a guy todd foreman yeah um and he convinced me

to do it and i was thinking about doing it my best friend uh is the ceo of the miami heat and he convinced me not to do it and i would have doubled my money in the sale so he was wrong you're basically you're basically buying season tickets and hoping it doubles I bought floor seats for the Clippers my wife got them for me as my birthday present

it's my best it's my happy place and I got them because CB3 was on the team we were very close friends and then he called to tell me he was leaving

going to the Rockets he said I can't stay in Blake Griffin anymore I have to go that is not what he said he said I cannot stand this guy he's driving me crazy I promise you anyone who go that is not what he said you know i cannot stand this guy listen he's driving me crazy i promise you anyone who thinks that is giving way too much credit to

to everybody else i think he made a decision to go play with oh that's kind of insulting in its own no no i don't think it's i just think they're trying to make drama out of something wasn't drama he wanted to go play with harden and trevor and you know he saw an opportunity and he feels like it's his old AU team, like the way the energy is. Yeah. And he's having a blast. But for me, it sucked because it was fun

seeing my friend out there every single game when I went. What A of Austin Rivers still? You know, we have Milos. Milos is great. Milos is my favorite. Milos, there's a lot of rivers. And I love Patrick Beverly because my wife and I just built a school in the Watts

with the help of Patrick Beverly. Oh, wow. We because my wife and I just built a school in the Watts with the help of Patrick Beverly. Oh, wow. We built a park. There was a public school in the Watts that needed a playground and everything else. And my wife, for her birthday, wanted to sponsor it. And Patrick Beverly saw it on my Instagram and went to the Clippers and said, we should team up with them. And we put up 50% and they put up 50%. We rebuilt this entire school park.

Wow. So I love him now. But Milos is my favorite because I watched the preseason game with the Clippers when they were in Hawaii. And it's Milos' first game ever as an NBA professional. And they're like, after all the years becoming a legend in Europe, you know, how did it feel? And you played so well and you had so many assists in a couple. And it was a friendly exhibition like yeah we talk about killer instinct and milos literally looks at them and he's like i did not enjoy this game we lost and they were like yeah but it's a friendly exhibition he goes i played a win

and like just dead serious milos looks like a guy who smokes a pack of cigarettes right before the game i was gonna say there's a lot of rumors about him with cigarettes yeah and just walks out there and goes i don't give two shits. He's a zero fucks kind of guy, but he wants to win, and I just love Milos. I think he's great. He might be a halftime smoke break guy. And I love Lou because I've known Lou since he was 17,

and he should have been an all-star this year. I don't understand why he settled with the contract he did. I would not have advised him on that one. I think he should have bet on himself this summer, but I was happy for the Clippers that they locked them down for three years. Some people just like to get locked down. I guess. Scooter Braun, good times. Last thing I wanted to ask you about, arena security. Obviously, you've had some experience with this. How do we get safer? I've heard different solutions, ideas for this,

your experiences with this. What do you think? So for anyone listening who doesn't know, the reason you're asking me is because I'm Ariana Grande's manager and her show in Manchester was the terrorist attack. The thing I learned from that show is that we can put in as many measures as we want,

but if someone is living that kind of evil and they are willing to kill themselves, they're going to kill people. That person waited outside of the arena for the show to end in a pickup area and waited until they were surrounded by as many children as possible. Looked those children in the eyes who had smiles on their faces and just enjoyed an Ariana Grande show. You know, I hate to say this, but your daughter's 12? Yeah.

You know, 12-year-olds. Yeah. An 11-year-old girl who died that day. And that person looked them in the eye and said, there's enough of them around me now. I'm going to do this. So what I think we can do is, you know, keep, you know, sharing information as much as possible, because that's how our intelligence agencies find stuff out and avoid crisis. But that kind of prevention is the only real prevention. You can put as many measures as you want, but that kind of evil you can't stop.

And the best thing we can do to stop it is to make it so that it doesn't live up to their agenda. And that's actually why we did the One Love Manchester concert two weeks later in Manchester. Because I just felt very strongly, and I put a lot of pressure on Ariana and it was unfair of me to do it, but she's tough as nails and she stepped up, and she and the city of Manchester are my heroes now. I felt like if their goal is to scare us from our way of life,

the best thing we can do for security is not change our way of life when these tragedies happen and answer them with defiance and courage and say, basically, fuck you. We're going to keep living our lives as a responsibility to those that were lost. Because you can put all kinds of venue security in place, but they'll wait in the parking lot across the street. Or they'll wait at a kid's baseball game and not a professional baseball game. Or they'll do all kinds of stuff because these people really believe in this evil agenda. But if you take away, if they say, say look the last time we did that it backlash on us they got stronger in two weeks later they're in a concert 60 000 strong saying we're not

changing a damn thing they're gonna think twice before they blow themselves up at a concert so i think you know we we have to just uh be resolute and strong and defiant, and that's the best way to deter violence. My friend Nathan Hubbard thinks that one of the big problems here is that tickets are just kind of these things that just kind of happen, and you don't know. You can't trace them. You don't know where they end up and all that stuff. The thing about the terrorists at our show didn't have a ticket.

Right. He was just outside. He waited. Yeah. He saw the security checkpoints. He saw everything. He goes, I'm going to wait 20 feet outside of the security checkpoint because they're going to have to leave and go to the train station.

The bigger fear would be that this happened inside a stadium with even more people, right? I mean, he killed a lot of people. He killed, the size of that bomb, whether it was in the stadium or out, he killed as many people as he possibly could. Yeah. The funny part is probably the safest place was in the arena. Interesting.

But the, like I said, it's. Do you see a future with tickets though, where we're going to be able to. I hope so. Every, you know, it almost be like buying an airline ticket where we know who has the airline ticket, that they're actually using it. You can't transfer it. I think that's probably where this is going five, six years from now.

I'm hoping so. I think a lot of the reason why we haven't seen that is because selling out shows is based on hype. Yeah. A lot of times. So artists won't mind scalpers scooping up a bunch of tickets because they want to say i sold out in a couple minutes well they tip them off and yeah the scalpers go crazy and everything else and it creates a hype for the show i mean people don't know this about

michael jackson but you know his original managers used to pay pay women to be at the airport screaming for him and after paying them like five or six times women just started showing up screaming for him because that's what you know people and fans thought they were supposed to do. Yeah. And with hype, when you hear, oh, that show sold out in minutes, you want to be in that show, whether you know what that show is or not. And I think that's why we haven't seen, because technology could easily stop scalping. Yeah.

But I don't think we want that yet. Nathan's written about that for The Ringer. It's really not that hard but the scalpers don't want it and some of the ticket agencies don't want it and the people throwing the shows they like saying I sold out in two minutes Scooter Brown

this is fun let me know when you buy an NBA team how's your jump shot? I had a nice resurgence a couple years ago as a stretch three. Oh, so you're like a slasher or like a stretcher? No, I was done. I was like, you turn 40 and you lose like one thing every year.

How tall are you? I'm 6'1 1⁄2". I've never heard 6'1 1⁄2 described as a stretch three. Well, that's the way till you get to 43. Yeah, but I'm saying like, I would consider that. I think your stretch three is Well, that's the way to, you get to 43. Yeah. But I'm saying like, that's like, I would consider that. I think your stretch three is different than mine. I would think of you as a shooting two who likes to go to the corner on the

fast break. Yeah. But I didn't used to play like that. That was the bummer. Yeah. But then 40 comes. Yeah. You don't get hurt.

But you know, when I got into a screaming match at my pickup game on Saturday, not because of wanting to get hurt. Right. I got into a screaming match because we pickup game on Saturday, not because of wanting to get hurt. I got into a screaming match because we got this kid who always comes. He's probably going to hear this and be like, yeah, that's me. And we have a great game. Everyone can play. There's all different levels, but everybody's a good guy.

It's not even winners stay on. It's winners stay on unless there's too many guys, and then winners shoot to stay on. It's a good energy, and everyone's there to play and not get hurt not get into a fight and this one guy loves to throw elbows and he loves to call everything but if you make a call he likes to talk shit even if he's not covering you that's the number one sin yeah and and you know everyone say carmelo was like that for a few years and pick up yeah well this guy was annoying a thousand everybody and usually it takes like six games before someone says anything i show up at the gym and i'm like the 12th guy so like they're starting

the first game i got next and me and my buddy are talking my buddy grand bun who uh is the morning country morning show uh host here in la who used to be a serious ball player and played overseas yeah and we're talking about this guy and he he's like, yeah, I remember playing with him a couple weeks ago. It's frustrating. We go in the game. We're three points into the first game. This is 7.30 in the morning on a Saturday.

And I shoot a three and a guy snake bites me. I call it. The guy's like, my bad. He knows he fouled me. It was like an aggressive snake bite. And this guy starts saying, saying oh it's a bitch call i don't even let him get another sentence out i brought my two boys to the gym that morning they're in the corner i think like my brother someone's watching him i for i don't i literally

saw red i forget my sons are behind me and i start screaming at this guy at the top of my lungs you know what i'm tired of your fucking mouth every fucking time i come here well i cursing like a sailor like tell him i was like it's not going down like i'm not waiting six games here and you're bullshit it ends right now we got a fucking problem like i'm ready to fight which my lawyer would not be happy about yeah and to his credit he just stopped talking and the rest of the game he stopped talking i went up to him later i'm like let's hug it out and i made him hug me and then everything else but i lost my goddamn mind because i'm at an age now at 36 where i'm not fighting on a basketball court to be competitive i'm fighting to keep you in a happy place yeah that's the difference when you get old when you're younger you're 21 playing pickup you're fighting

because you want that bravado and you want to kill somebody and you want to go out there when you're 36 and in your 40s all you want to do is have a nice game without a twisted ankle and if anyone threatens that you are willing to kill them i had jacoby and i were going for two years to usc and playing with the usc kids and i was like 41 42 and it was i i just thought it was dead for me and it's still the most fun on the planet. The three hour run is still my number one thing. I've never really fully been able to replace it. There's something like has been part of my life off and on since I was, I don't know,

14. And there's nothing like it. Like golf is just not as good. Tennis is not as good. There's nothing like trying to stay in the court and making friends with all these people you'd never be friends with anyway and the bonding that goes in and just like pushing for one more game and yeah this is the game i'm gonna get hurt i shouldn't play when that basket turns into an ocean yeah when you get that when you get that rhythm best when you get three or four going down

in a row and you get a real good rhythm and you you know they expect you shoot and you throw a dime and and you feel real good about it and you know you know, they expect you to shoot and you throw a dime and you feel real good about it. And you know, you finish there, there's nothing like pickup. I was going to take HGH to keep going. And I did all these research. I really was because my body was starting to break down and I could feel it. And I was like a half step slow from where I was before, but just the reactions were, and I was just like, the only way I keep going is peds and i did

all the research and i'm like this would be a funny story like i'll take hgh to like help me but then i did all the research and you and hgh is kind of scary like if you have any cancer in your body it it can bring it out potentially and there are all these side effects i was like i'm out this is crazy when was the last time you played pickup uh the 2014 finals in um miami because the year before we had arranged all these nba games and how much work do you have to do this weekend huh how much work do you have to do no i can't i'm i'd have to i'd have to rebuild my legs it would take me three months to come back what if i told you this is a game where you could i'd need three months. I don't want to get hurt. You're not going to get hurt.

I did your podcast. You have to come to my Saturday morning game this week. All right, give me three weeks. Three weeks? Yeah, give me three weeks and I'll come. Okay, three weeks. You and me, Saturday morning. Okay.

There we go. It's pretty early. All right. Scooter Braun, thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much to Scooter. Thanks to ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. My listeners can try it for free at ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. My listeners can try it

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