The Pomp Podcast - Zuby, a Rapper, Author, Speaker, and Coach: Music, Masculinity and Social Media Mayhem

Episode Date: November 13, 2019

Zuby is a rapper, author, speaker, and coach. He graduated from Oxford and is quickly becoming an international sensation. In this conversation, Zuby and Anthony Pompliano discuss politics, guns, religion, social media, gender, and many more controversial topics. BLOCKFI-----BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a USD loan funded directly to your bank account. They do loans ranging from $2,000 to $10,000,000, and they're perfect for helping you reach your financial goals of all sizes. Visit BlockFi.com/Pomp to learn more about putting your crypto to work without having to sell it. CRYPTO.COM-----Crypto.com is a pioneering payment and cryptocurrency platform that seeks to accelerate the world's transition to cryptocurrency. With the vision of "cryptocurrency in every wallet", the Crypto.com App offers a full range of financial products with competitive pricing, well designed UX and high security. It is the best place to buy, sell and pay with crypto. COINMINE-----The Coinmine One is like an Xbox that turns your electricity into Bitcoin. You just plug it in, connect to wifi, and tap on the crypto you want. It’s so easy anyone can do it. Everything is controlled from the Coinmine mobile app and the Coinmine keeps getting better with over the air updates that add new coins, features and services to your Coinmine. Visit coinmine.com/pomp to get a Coinmine and earn crypto for powering a new world. ETORO-----This episode of Off the Chain is sponsored by eToro, the smartest crypto trading platform, and one of the largest in the world. Join 11 million other traders and create an account at etoro.com and build your crypto portfolio the smart way.

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off The Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Zuby is a rapper, author, speaker, and coach. He graduated from Oxford and is quickly becoming an international sensation. In this conversation, we basically discussed everything we aren't allowed to. We talked about politics, guns, religion, social media, gender, and many more controversial topics. I really enjoyed hearing Zuby's perspective on the world, and I find his interest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to be quite telling. This is a great episode, so I really hope you enjoy it.

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Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. Zuby's here. I feel like the man, the myth, the legend. All right. We got a whole bunch of shit to cover. Let's start with um, who the fuck is Zuby? Like, like, who are you? Okay. So, uh, I'm Zuby, independent rapper and creative entrepreneur, uh, author of the book, strong advice, Zuby's guide to fitness for everybody, host of the real talk with Zuby podcast. I am a independent hip hop artist. Of course, also a podcaster, writer, occasional public speaker, occasional fitness coach,

occasional life coach i do i do a whole bunch of stuff all right so look you you uh you've been at this a really long time we're talking before we started recording uh 15 years in the making and now it's like everyone has discovered you but uh there's a lot of hard work that's gone into this before we get to the hard work though let's talk about uh the video in february okay yeah what what is this video that just exploded on the internet and kind of brought a bunch of attention then we'll go back to kind of what you did before uh before that video went on no problem so uh on the 26th of february it's still my pin tweet on twitter i uh i posted a video of me doing a 230 kilogram deadlift and in the caption of the tweet i wrote something like um i keep hearing about how

biological men have no physical advantage over women in 2019 so watch me destroy the british women's deadlift record without trying p.s i identified as a woman while lifting the weight so don't be a bigot and um i wrote that thinking that you know a number of my 19 000 followers at the time would would find it funny but i realized within about 10 minutes that i'd created an absolute monster so that tweet's now done almost 7 million impressions over 2 million views on the video just on twitter alone and it got picked up you know it went crazy um i think the video got about 10 000 views in the first 10 minutes and then within an hour it had cracked 50 000 by the time i went to bed that night it was at 300k woke up in the morning over half a million and it just

kept going i was gaining like 100 followers um an hour for several weeks and it just kept going and started getting picked up by the media bbc sky news uh fox news here sky news in australia it just went crazy then joe rogan picked it up talked about it on the podcast shouted me out on the podcast i remember he was like get that dude in here get him in here so that brought a whole whole another wave and it just uh it's just kept growing and snowballing and just been getting all these new opportunities i've now been out here in the states for nine weeks it's my very last day in the states this is my last day yeah i'm going back tonight oh man well thank you for coming to spend uh spend an hour with us you're welcome man you're welcome all right so what was the video

like in terms of what chord did it hit because it obviously you posted it trying to be funny right and there's plenty of people who laughed but it also really resonated with a lot of people and i think that's what really drove kind of the the attention to it like what is that chord of society that it struck is it just that you were just being honest and saying stuff that people normally don't feel comfortable saying or like from your perspective what did you hit i think it hit a whole bunch of different nerves i think firstly it's one of those issues that's at the cross section of lots of different areas of society and culture so there was you know there was sort of like obviously just in terms of the sports itself so it kind of hit the sports world

it hit the whole kind of um socio-political world it hit the uh i don't know like obviously It went into the kind of LGBT world. It went into multiple countries as well. And it's one of those issues that's been going on for a while. Some people are very aware of and privy to. Some people are not. But it was a very hot-button topic at the time. I didn't realize how much so until it went viral because, of course, you've got the Olympics coming up next year.

So they've been trying to decide what the rules should be in that regard. You've had multiple stories from different countries of transgender women or men identifying as women or whatever the case is, breaking women's records, winning their races, beating them in fights, various sports, all this kind of stuff. And it's one of those issues where I believe that over 90% of people are actually not in favor of that being able to happen, right? I think if you went out and pulled people on the streets, regardless of their political views or whatever, and you just ask people, do you think someone who's biologically male should be able to compete against biological women in sport? Most people would say no in private. But publicly, we live in a time where there's a lot of things where people are afraid to voice publicly for a lot of repercussions. And I think it was also the fact that it wasn't – I wasn't even explaining the point. And there was no anger.

There was no malice. There was no anything. I was just like, OK, these are the rules. Cool. I'll play. I'll play by these two and I'll use your own rules to show you why this is a bad idea. So does the new record stand or or did they say this doesn't count? So the video that went viral was actually just from a training session. It wasn't in a sanctioned competition to set an actual record. It would have to be in a sanctioned competition, which I didn't do. But could you have done it? Like, is that part of what the rules are today?

could you walk in and say i identify as a female it break the record and then walk away it depends on the league i know the u.s um apl the u.s um powerlifting organization i know that they have they've banned it so it's so you can't do it so it depends on the um from sport to sport it depends on the federation some of them have different rules some will say okay you need to i think in the olympics for example now they're saying you have to suppress your keep your testosterone below a certain level for two years and then anyone can compete in the women's which is a terrible rule still um and then there's other ones where it's just self-identification um so you can just anyone who you can just literally do what i do and say you identify as a woman and go smash the record

yeah go smash up the records um it's probably worth saying as well that i can lift 100 pounds more than i did in that video that wasn't remotely close to my maximum but that was kind of the point it was like i don't even compete and yeah i can crush this record well and i think part of it is um the way i see the world is it's actually not a binary either right it's not like hey uh you should be able to identify however you want right or you can't for example because then you get into things like transgender right which is well what if you are biologically one gender but then you switch right it's more than just psychologically or kind of mentally saying hey identify as something now you've actually taken steps physiologically to transfer um or or uh or

change your gender etc and so when you start getting into this world like i don't know if there is a good answer right to a lot of this stuff but like it is so complex especially when you then overlay the the socio aspects of it for the sports thing i don't for the sports thing i don't think it's complicated at all okay it's very simple what is it you you've got two solutions This is why I think it's ideological rather than a push for genuine inclusivity and fairness, right? You can either have two rules, right? Either one, you can have a separate transgender division in whatever the sport may be. It's unlikely you'd have enough people to compete in that.

And so that main option. So you'd have male, female, and then transgender. Yeah, that's one option. Okay. Or you can have what already exists, which a lot of people aren't aware of. most male sports are not actually male sports leagues okay there's i don't believe there's any rule in the nba mlb and you know any of these sports divisions nfl that explicitly says a woman can't compete but for obvious reasons there's no woman who's good enough in american football

to compete and with the best in the world in american football yep uh same with basketball same with any sport essentially and that so and that belief is more because of the biological aspect of just absolutely men are bigger stronger stronger exactly we know this that's why you you split them up to begin with so you could just have an open division and then if you've got an open division then regardless of whatever someone's you know gender identity or whatever the thing is if they're good enough they can they can compete in that competition and then it's fair and then you're not sacrificing 50 50 of the population to appease perhaps one person yeah And I think those are pretty fair and simple solutions, right?

It's just like, look, let's not try to put people in boxes. Actually, just say anyone who's the best, come compete. Exactly. Because it's not about, you know, even the point I was making. It's like I'm just talking about facts here. This isn't discriminating against. This isn't even really saying anything about my thoughts or anyone else's thoughts on this whole issue. It's just like, look, if you're talking sports, it's got to be fair.

it's gotta be even safe it's science it's even yeah it's it's simple science it's basic science and it's even it's even safety and security right if you if you do have someone like myself right you know someone like yourself and you're competing against like there are pretty much apart from like a very small handful of women who were like super duper elite and in many cases like jacked up on steroids right there are almost no women in the world who are like there's tons of guys in the world who are stronger than me of course right uh i'm a strong guy but there's tons of guys in the world who are stronger than me there are almost no women in the world who are stronger right and so it's crazy right like i used to play rugby and stuff like if i if i just

went and i like like if i tried to play against the the english rugby team men's team i'd get crushed yeah okay if i identified as a woman and but i would probably make immediately make the english like national team just pure physicality yeah speed strength etc like i'd just be running running through them because there's just a difference yeah so all right so that so this video and i i jokingly put in the uh we're live on twitter for those that are just listening um and i said that you're a 15 year overnight success right which is how these things tend to tend to work um let's go back 15 years before this right so uh my understanding is um You split time growing up in Saudi Arabia and London, is that right?

UK. UK, okay. Not London specifically, yeah. Got it. And so what kind of after childhood, what did you do leading up to your big moment on the stage of Twitter? Yeah, sure. So yeah, so I grew up in Saudi Arabia.

I moved there when I was one. My family lived out there. My parents worked out there. So I went to school there from preschool all the way up until fifth grade. Okay. When I was 11, I actually went to boarding school. So I went to the U.K. and I was back and forth between the two countries for about nine years. So I did seven years boarding school there, did really well in school, got into Oxford University, went there, studied computer science.

That's where I started my music career, actually. Was studying computer science at Oxford is where you started music? That's where I started rapping, yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah. Bit of a weird origin story. You know what I love about this, though, is everything that, and before we started recording, we were talking, I actually was following you before the deadlift thing, right? And so when I, the first time I heard Rogan say, like, where's this Zuby dude, you know, whatever, like, go get that guy.

I remember being like, wait, what? The guy, like, you know, whatever. And I wish I remembered why I followed you, but for whatever reason, I was. um but it's all of the things in the traditional like way of life right that like your parents say hey you know be really smart go to school get a great education you know go get your degree go get a job like also like you did a lot of that stuff oh yeah and you blew up because of a video where basically you just said what everyone's thinking and no one wants to say right and so like to me there's some um um comedy to that right of like this new world that we're in even though

you went to Oxford, you studied computer science or all this stuff. That's what explodes. Right. Yeah. And I mean, that video is actually a good metaphor in quite a lot of ways, because, you know, I often joke that it took me to identify as a woman for nine seconds. And that's what brought so much attention and opportunity to me. But, you know, one of my friends made a really good point on it. And he was like, you know, it took you it took you 15 years to make that. He's like, almost nobody could make that video because almost nobody can lift that weight. Right. So he's like it took you there's a whole backstory behind you even physically being able to do that and that's like a good metaphor for everything else because it's like you know most people can't just

stroll in the gym and lift 500 600 pounds yep um it's taken a lot of work and training to get to that level so although it seems like it was just that one moment if you kind of look behind the curtain you back it up there's a lot behind that and i think that's really how everything's been for me got it and so what was the interest at uh while you're there at oxford studying computer science where'd the interest in music come from were you into music kind of as a child or was it just at one point you decided hey I want to go do this so as a child I used to play piano and I used to play trombone for a little while I used to do recitals and stuff like that but I wasn't really a music fan I wasn't really a listener initially until I went to boarding school and then I really

fell in love with hip-hop when I was like maybe 13 or so started listening to lots of like Nas jay-z oh no it's one mic man yeah man yeah even before that album i mean i was listening to like it was written yeah i used to i used to run home from uh from school and uh what was it uh trl remember with carson daly uh here in the u.s and they would play the top 10 songs and one mic like dominated oh really like a year and i remember in the play music video right got the chair sitting in the room and they break the glass and he was like this shit's awesome and music used to be a lot more exciting in a lot of ways yeah i think the um speed and ease of consumption now has somewhat devalued it but maybe that's me being a little boomerish um okay boomer yeah so i i was a

fan you know i was a fan and then um when i was in my first year of university i was going to nigeria for a vacation okay and i got stuck in an airport in paris okay and i was by myself had like 24 hours to kill basically and i didn't have much on me i had my mp3 player and i had like a notepad and i just started jotting down some lyrics and it came to me fairly naturally for someone who considering i'd never done it yeah it came to me fairly naturally so i kept doing it and i would just uh take my phone and record record my raps oh so you were writing the lyrics and then recording on the phone yeah just recording them into my phone yeah yeah so just super duper basic and then i kind of started getting the confidence to play it to people you know people like yeah

that's pretty good and whatever and were you editing music in underneath it or this was all kind of like acapella this was pretty much acapella at the time okay um and then when i got back to uh university one of my friends chris had um just like a basic recording setup in his dorm room and uh so i would go on a website i don't know if it's still going soundclick.com it's like way before soundcloud and before before youtube even pretty much and um i'd go on there and producers would put up beats so i'd download beats and you know just just rap over them so i recorded my very first song was a song called the bad man okay um it's funny like lots of my friends at university that's my nickname with them the bad man so um i recorded that song um and then

i followed it up with one called oh no and another track called tonight and i kind of had these three songs and i was just putting them out to you know friends in the universe friends in my what was the reception it was really positive it was really positive um and to be fair like i mean i can Obviously, if I go back and listen to them now, I'm like, okay, I've gotten a lot better. Practice. But it's not that bad. It's not. Even now, if I listen to it, I'm not like, that was terrible.

It's like, okay, I picked it up pretty fast. And then I actually released my first album, Commercial Underground, when I was in my second year of university. So after I'd been rapping for about nine months, I released my first album. And I just initially started with a run of 50 CDs. i just did 50 cds and um i just went around the university and sold them you sold them to my friends and people i knew for like five pounds each um and i sold out of them in probably two weeks and so i was like okay so i took that money i reinvested it i did you know another couple hundred copies and sold those and that you know and that was that realization point of okay you

know it's one thing for someone to say okay i like i like your music or you're good at rapping whatever but if someone's willing to pay for a cd then i'm like okay yeah yeah there's something happening there so i started doing uh more like more gigs um i did a couple gigs when i was still living in saudi arabia at the time i actually did a couple gigs there at some of the schools and then i'm like man what's living in saudi arabia like different man i can imagine yeah a lot of stuff different uh where i lived was very much an expat community so it was a little bit of a bubble yep so in terms of the culture kind of within that little 1500 people yep you get some aspects of the saudi arabian culture but but more so expat yeah there there it's very

expat but then you if you go out you know into the city or anything you want to go shopping you've got to go into the city and then you're in the real saudi where you know the usual rules and laws and regulations and everything apply so it's cool like i have a very positive um view and memories of growing up in saudi arabia which surprises quite a lot of people you know i think people expect me to talk about how awful and scary or whatever it was and i'm like nah like it was you like it yeah i loved it i loved it and what was their reception when you come back and now you're producing music and i'm assuming you're trying to sell the cds and stuff in saudi arabia what was the uh response in terms of um you know kind of you coming from the uk right with music

that i don't know if they listen to it or not or whatever but what was that response like um so i wasn't really pushing my music beyond my sort of local community okay or anything in saudi yep um i was doing that in the uk initially eventually i started just going out on the street and just doing doing street hustle just uh you know once i kind of once everyone i knew had my music already then it was like okay cool i took all the money i could from everyone i know i need to take it to new people yeah i mean i've sold over 25 000 albums out of a backpack pretty much man that's fucking awesome thank you yeah and this is like literally on so we're recording to new york city like on the street corner you walk outside people will hand you a cd right and

people in new york basically like hey man get out of my way right but all the tourists etc they grab the cd and next you know they're asking oh i don't know i don't do it like that i hate that man all right how do you do it i don't do that man what did you do i'm up front i'm up front so i'll i'll see you hey what's up man you know what kind of what kind of music do you listen to if you're you know if you got the time and you're interested you say okay i like some hip-hop whatever i'm like cool i introduce myself tell you what i'm doing and i'd always have my headphones i'll have my music i'll have my music loaded up on my phone like yo have a listen look this is my album this is how much it costs yep i'll play you some tracks if you like it and you want to check

it out and support what i'm doing then here we go so i don't like that whole thing it's way more authentic authentic man i don't like this i don't i don't like this thing of giving it to someone like it's free and then like pressuring that i'm not like i wish and there's a few people who would do that in the uk and it kind of it kind of messes up the game for everybody everybody else because it's like i don't want people to think that's my approach and no i'd rather just be honest with people and you know if someone someone doesn't want it it's totally fine you know i'd have like promotional cards as well so with my social media and youtube and everything so it's like cool no worries man have a listen online and if you like it you can also check it out a theme across this

whole, um, kind of evolution of your life and your career is, uh, it seems at least from my perspective, you've gotten very, very good at producing things that people want, which is half the battle. The other half is how do you get it in their hands, right? How do you convince them to buy it? Um, and whether it's, uh, the merchandise, it's the CDs, it's the book, you know, we'll kind of talk about all these different things. Um, you put a lot of work into figuring out how to sell stuff. Yeah. Right. And once you understand how that works and how the human psyche works and kind of what people what motivates people to actually purchase something you that with the product is interchangeable. Right. And you kind of move it across different different aspects of

what you want to push in terms of what you're optimizing for. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, a lot of a lot of it is just being real with people and knowing your audience and getting people to like you. Now, you can't make people like you, but if you know who does like you and you know why they like you then everything kind of becomes easy from there that's why you know this year my focus has really just been on building the audience yep and letting people know who I am letting people know what my message is and whatever I find and I found that wherever I go like from city to city country to country whatever now even in different zones I can go and talk to Tucker Carlson on Fox News and then go talk to Joe Rogan and then go talk to like a school teacher

here and talk to and it's there's like a common thread through it all like these things might seem really disparate and not connected but i find that if you're just authentic and you're true to yourself and you and you you're honest with people and people just like your demeanor and you're positive then people what one people will want to support you yep um and you know you're you're encouraging and helping people and all that and you know opportunities just kind of will come your will come your way you know i think good people who are on a certain level vibe kind of find and will resonate with each other yeah i mean look to be completely honest the reason why i wanted to do this was i was like hey man that's gonna be fun yeah

like i'm sure he's got some things that he must talk about whatever but like that would just be a fun conversation to have and i think that uh when you give off the vibe of hey you're authentic right it will be fun to have a conversation with you that's where you can attract all these different types of people who just say look i don't even have an agenda right as much as i just want to enjoy a conversation with somebody who i don't feel like has a hidden agenda who isn't trying to sell me something you know whatever um so today you've got let's see uh you've got an album right eight eight albums but what's the latest one perseverance all right and where can people find that that's on itunes spotify my website teamzoobie.com um all the places you'd

get music from. Um, if you want to stream it, if you want to download it, just search Zuby on any platform. Um, if you want to get a CD, then my website. Merchandise. What, tell me the story of how, like, where did the idea for the merchandise come from? Team Zuby is fucking fantastic marketing. So, so just what's the story behind the merchandise and then Team Zuby name? Yeah, sure. So I released my first bit of merchandise in university as well. So I made one t-shirt for myself and uh because i had someone made a logo for me as the zoobie logo it's the one with the two dots it's different from that one um and i was thinking of i was like okay i want to make a t-shirt for myself to promote my music yep and i didn't want to just have the logo on it i thought

that was a little boring i think it needed something to capture people's attention so i was toying around with lots of different ideas and eventually i came up with i'm down with zoobie are you so those shirts anyone who went to university with me will recognize that shirt okay because i used to wear it all the time it was just i just had a black shirt with white writing i'm down with zoobie are you right and so people would always ask questions they'd say oh what's what's uh someone's asking what's the album name the album is called perseverance um so yeah i just got the t-shirt for myself to begin with and then my friends at university started being like hey man like i want one too i want one of those t-shirts so i went back to saudi

and i got like 10 printed and i just gave them to my best friends at university so like there were just a bunch of us who were going around with these black t-shirts saying i'm down with zuby are you that's awesome yeah and people would like see them and be like hmm am i am i down with zuby like what zuby you know because it makes people ask what zuby yep right um so that started happening and then eventually i just i started selling that one t-shirt alongside my album and then eventually i did them in like a range of like 20 different colors and i did girls ones and you know i'd have people come into my gigs and stuff wearing them and it sort of expanded from there um you know people wanted hoodies and then hats and it's gotten to a stage i think i've got

one of the widest merchandise ranges now in the uk really yeah i've got a really broad range of stuff now pretty big thing yeah and to me like again what i take away from that story is uh there's a lot of people who sitting in college where everyone wants to kind of conform to being the popular kid and kind of the social norms etc uh frankly they just wouldn't have the balls to walk around the shirt with their name on most people still don't right yeah and yeah especially after college right but definitely during college and there's a a thing that i've seen on twitter specifically where the people who are most authentic are the people who are least scared of being embarrassed or failing in public etc what you're talking about is having done that in real

life and being willing to have the self-confidence to walk around with your own name on your shirt but then it becomes a thing yeah right and once it becomes a thing then people want it right and you just kind of build off of that but it really comes from that element of like not being scared to just do what you want to do absolutely absolutely and i've really learned that i mean a question i'm getting a lot now um i did a did a meetup in new york last night which was awesome a lot of people came um but a big question i get man how do you deal with all the big people see the negativity and crap i get on social yeah and people are like man dude how do you deal with all that stuff and i was telling my story about going out and selling 25 000 albums on the streets of

the uk i mean do you know how many people i had to talk to to sell that many albums like i've spoken when i'd say i've spoken to like half a million people i'm not exaggerating and there's like in real world face to face so i've had every rejection every way that somebody can say no every one way someone can show disinterest i've had that multiple multiple times and so and i know my mission i know who i am i know what i believe so it's like there's nothing anyone can say to me whether that's online or offline or whatever that's gonna just sort of uh you know make me feel super duper sad or when i want to give up or anything like that like i just use it all as ammunition fuel like i write some of my best songs after i've been like you know when like

people are talking a lot of ground like okay okay okay like let's switch it it is this belief that um and again a lot of this uh people don't understand uh there's pressure there's negativity etc it's what sports athletes and celebrities dealt with 20 years ago sure today the quote to quote average person if they grow a following online they get the same stuff yeah right and it's um actually in some cases they didn't ask for it right so you see these people who go viral who you know they caught in their worst moment or their best moment or whatever they just get sucked in and there's people who you know like yourself which uh you were looking to promote your music right your merchandise etc but you also get pulled into an area of the world where maybe you didn't

intend to be there either right and so um you know it it's a positive side of hey you create this video it goes viral right and it kind of started as a joke whatever but you didn't ask for all that all the hate oh no no i didn't know i was gonna go that far like like and and so how how do you deal with it and do you ever just wake up and say like i don't want to do this anymore right or like today i don't want to deal with this no i mean look you can always log off that's what i always tell people you know when people talking about like cyber bullying or like this or that i'm like look you don't no one is forcing me to be on twitter no one's forcing me to be on youtube instagram whatever so yeah sure the stuff can be annoying and occasionally i might

need to mute someone or very rarely block them if they're just being really yeah they're just being complete idiots but ultimately it's like it's my choice and in the real world like i love my life like i'm very happy i've got a wonderful family wonderful friends great girlfriend like life is life is cool so i'm not gonna let what's going on in this world i can just put put this down here and i'm not worrying now about oh what's going on on twitter or whatever it's like i choose to look at it as much as i want and then also the the love outweighs it like 30 times right for every 30 30 of course you know i get all these lovely dms and great people and i'm seeing people in real life who i'm meeting or telling me i'm helping them inspiring them they like what i do

and then yeah you get the occasional well now it's more than occasional but you know you get some random avatar on twitter calling you a mean name they're always anonymous right right and it's just like okay like why would i let that ruin my yeah my day that doesn't even make sense for sure so you're on a eight week tour in the u.s right yeah nine weeks nine weeks okay yeah what um what's been the craziest thing you've done or like the most fun memorable thing Wow. A lot of stuff. I've been watching on Twitter. You've done all over the country. What did you say? You said L.A., San Francisco, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth.

Where else? Atlanta, Nashville, D.C., New York. Jeez, man. You see more of the country than most Americans have. What do you think is the most memorable thing from the whole trip? Man, I'd certainly say one aspect has been, you know, having the opportunity to do so many awesome podcasts and shows and meet people who I greatly admire and who I listen to and everything like that. That's that's been really dope. One cool thing has been the meetups. So I did the very first meetup in San Francisco. I just literally tweeted out, hey, I want to anyone want to go get dinner in San Francisco? and two hours later i'm there sitting with a bunch of people who follow me on twitter and we're just having great conversation and good food and so i was like cool i can do this in

other cities so i did one in atlanta i did one in nashville did one in dc had new york new york last night which was the probably the biggest um and just man that's amazing i i'm i'm an independent rapper from the uk so to be able to you're according to tiger carlson when you want to be a famous rapper from the uk famous rapper from the uk yeah so those that don't know So Zuby went on a Tucker Carlson show on Fox News and I saw a clip this morning before we got here and underneath him where they usually put, you know, founder of X company, CEO, whatever. It just said famous rapper from the UK.

That is the most OG thing I've seen on television in a long time. Yeah, I do. I do crack up when I saw that because I watched it live when they broadcast it and I was like, Oh yeah. i'll take it i'm gonna get a business card made with famous rapper from the uk yeah um so yeah the meetups were great like i was saying just knowing that having people in every city who care yeah who like me and who like want to just go and hang out for a few hours and talk and well and you went to the white house yeah right to the white

house and you were saying that while you're in the white house people are dming you being like Yo, yo, yo, I heard you're at the White House. Can I come meet up? Yeah, so I've got fans in the White House and the Pentagon and all these places I didn't know. Because you don't know who's watching. You don't know who's listening. You don't know who's following. You get Trump to blast some Zuby in the Oval Office?

Yeah. I did get a chance to meet the president. But maybe next time. Whoever is working in the White House, he said next time. He's coming back. Yeah, I'm coming back, man. I've been there twice now. But yeah, I mean, like last week, do you know Dan Crenshaw?

Yeah. Yeah. Like he DM'd me. He's the man. Yeah. He followed me on Twitter and DM'd me and was like, yeah, you know, I saw your interview with Ben Shapiro, like really like what you had to say and this and that. Andrew Yang followed me today.

Oh, Andrew Yang as well. Andrew Yang followed me and Scott Adams followed me today. So it's like, you're just, it's just interesting seeing it kind of grow. We got to talk about this, right? There's like a underground culture or community, right? So you just named a bunch of them. So there's Scott Adams, Andrew Yang, Rogan's in there, the Tim Ferriss is whatever. And for whatever reason, a lot of them tend to be males, right?

But these are all people who I think have built very large audiences and very loyal, engaged audiences around being more rational, I think, and kind of not bending to the cultural pressures, right? And so each one of them has their own thing, right? You know, like Yang's running for president. Right. And he's very different than, you know, Crenshaw or Shapiro or whatever. But does it say something about the fact that there's so many different people who take the same mechanism of just I'm not going to bend to the cultural pressures? I'm going to speak my truth. I'm going to be rational that they all are gravitating towards you who are you're doing the same thing. You're doing a different way. Right. On different topics. But do you think that there's like almost camaraderie around the fact that, hey, I respect somebody who's willing to just say what they believe and not conform? Or do you think that it's more just coincidence that those are the types of people?

No, it's not. It's not a coincidence. You know, a lot of people think a lot of the, you know, been having a lot of political conversations a lot. And a lot of people think, you know, everything's left versus right, right versus left, conservative versus liberal on everything. and a lot of it is more like in this current climate a lot of it is more like reasonable rational people versus like unhinged crazy people you know it's really it's really more like that like it's it's you could take someone who i in terms of i don't know political policy like i almost disagree with them on every issue yeah but as long as like but i'm reasonable they're reasonable we're not going to like scream at each other or call each other evil or call each other

nazis or whatever you know like just we're just going to be reasonable decent human beings and we can chill we can be friends we can have great conversations whatever it's just you know but you've got people on fringes who yeah they're just you know really emotional and angry and part of this is i think why like rogan specifically has blown up in mainstream uh media or kind of culture is if you look at all of the mainstream media, they're optimizing for the inflammatory, salacious headlines, you know, audio clips, et cetera. So what they actually are doing is they're enticing and incentivizing people to be on the extreme. Exactly. Right. And so take their coverage of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Donald Trump, AOC, you know, just down

of line it's across the aisle just they want the salacious inflammatory stuff but i've now listened to rogan interview uh bernie sanders andrew yang i've learned more listening to those interviews than i've ever learned from the mainstream media of course and it's because it's a much more rational uh conversation that doesn't have interruptions and it's what do you believe about health care yeah sure what do you believe about x can we return the mainstream media back to kind of that rational less salacious world no or is it stuck and it's just going to continue accelerating kind of on the extremes no no it's not going back why because of the format okay right so when i was on tucker carlson i had six minutes right solve the world's problems

i had six minutes six minute segment to discuss some pretty new like i think i handled myself well but you don't have a lot of time to expand you've got just just the format of television because you've only got 24 hours in a day and each host or whatever has you know 30 minute show one hour show whatever you've got plus the ads so it's all really really short bits and there's no real way to expand that like rogan can sit there for two three four five hours and talk to someone And if there's something that, you know, we're doing this podcast now, if there's something that I say which needs clarification, you can be like, oh, what do you mean when you said that? Or go into a little more detail. On TV, you can't do that.

There's just not the time. No. So you've just got to have the sound bites. And as you said, it incentivizes everyone to be a little more extreme and shouty and irrational and emotional than they could be. right when i saw uh i watched that one in fact i watched uh all of joe's interviews that he's done with democratic candidates right has he done any with republican candidates uh no no because there aren't any it's just trump yeah oh that's true yeah there aren't he did tulsi as well and uh bernie sanders yeah yeah and so i got i'd love to hear him and elizabeth warren

that would be fascinating yeah i saw her on the breakfast club but yeah i mean it's so there you can at least understand what people's where people's heads are at and get more of their personality and everything rather than this you know stand on stage and shout at each other for five minutes i actually saw there was i don't know if it's a petition or someone was just tweeting about uh joe rogan should uh moderate a presidential uh debate he's not down yeah well i could just imagine him just be like fuck this like i'm out right like in the middle of it um but uh all right so let's talk a little bit about bitcoin and crypto because that's actually what we're supposed of course of course uh what do you know about bitcoin what's kind of your view um coming from

like more of a uh music writing kind of creative type you know um focus in life you blow up online etc bitcoin in the community that's listening right now is you know it's a say i'll be all right they're they're obsessed with it cryptocurrency is going to take over the world etc that's not a world that you necessarily come from but like what is your perspective as to how this fits into the world yeah sure well i've got an entire song called crypto currently which is oh really yeah i didn't know that yeah there's a song on my latest album that's all about oh we're gonna tweet that out for sure yeah i think i name dropped like at least 40 different cryptos in there um yeah go listen to that it's interesting it was it was it was a bit of a thing of wordplay

i wanted to make a song where whether or not you knew you understood the references the song would still make sense okay so um when did you record this 18 uh 2018 2018 okay so like after the big mania and it was kind of still yeah when it was bleed when it was blood in the streets yeah yeah so yeah so in terms of my own investments i'm still waiting to you know get get back in the black because my mom the timing of my investments was not too great so i first heard about bitcoin i mean i'm computer science grad yeah so i actually heard about bitcoin i hate saying this like somewhat early maybe like 2012 or 2013 like i heard something but i never looked into it i thought it was just like an in-game currency or something like that i did or like something like

paypal it was one of a lot of different versions that were out there in the world right it just happens that this one ended up being worth 160 billion dollar market yeah yeah i just i just never looked into it i didn't i didn't understand the fact that it was uh you know fully decentralized And, you know, people didn't know who the founder was and that it was deflationary and limited in number. And if you I mean, because it's because it's unique. Right. The first time you've had a digital anything that is not limitless. Right.

And I didn't research it properly until 2017. OK. And that was when I was like, oh, like for me, it was actually a pretty easy sell because I'm quite libertarian minded and I'm aware of a lot of the issues with like central banks and just the money system in general and the way that it's even been abused both in history and also in different countries. Right. So in a country like the U.K., a country like the U.S.A., people don't need – I think people don't need to be irrationally concerned with like massive – what do you call it? When they just start printing money. Inflation. Yeah.

Inflation, hyperinflation. There's a word though, isn't there? When they just do the money printing. Quantitative easing. Quantitative easing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've seen what happened in my lifetime in places like Zimbabwe. Seeing what's happening.

You know, and so I remember one of my friends in boarding school coming into school and he'd have like five hundred billion dollar notes and stuff. Billionaire by age 22. He just had this money. He just would be showing us all these notes and we're just like, what on earth? Like, what's going on in your country, man? So, yeah. So for me, it was actually a fairly easy sell in terms of the value proposition. So I think it's a really interesting world.

But I'm quite the, that's probably, that's certainly how I came to follow you. Yep. And I follow quite a lot of people in the crypto world and things like that. So I do think that it's a very exciting space. Like I'm, I wouldn't go as far as saying I'm an evangelist, but I'm very like pro-Bitcoin, pro-crypto. Look, to create a song about it, right, you obviously know more than most, right, in that sense. Skrt, skrt. Want to know who has the best URL?

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interest rate of six percent in return go check out blockfi.com slash pomp again blockfi.com slash pomp to sign up and start earning interest on your crypto today what what is um what do you kind of feel like in terms of uh so you have what i'll just call retail channels right so you're selling music you're selling um uh t-shirts and gear etc do you accept bitcoin have you ever thought about it like i was gonna say team zoobie.com does accept bitcoin bitcoin cash and ethereum oh nice i don't think i don't think i've ever actually done a sale in crypto though but i do accept it yeah okay so that was gonna be part of my question what was the thought process was it just hey i want as many payment options as possible and this is another one that i think

people might use or was there some other like thought process behind accepting bitcoin yeah well i thought well if i'm you know telling people about bitcoin and i'm invested in it and i i believe in the idea and everything then it only makes sense for me to accept it you know um and so yeah it's and also i think it's you know making making a little bit of a statement as well in fact that's something i'll probably start shouting out shouting shouting about a little bit more because i kind of until now i almost forgot that my website does take bitcoin um just because it's not after after we release this thing if you talk about it i'm sure somebody will give you some bitcoin yeah yeah because it's it's not you know for the average person who comes

across my music and my merch it's it's not their uh usual currency for sure so i don't i haven't like kind of pushed it too much but um yeah i'm very it's it's i keep a pretty close eye on the space and I remember yeah I just think it's it's exciting I mean I've I saw like I'm I'm 33 so I remember seeing where you know I remember when people didn't think that email addresses had value I remember when people didn't think that I've been on Facebook since 2004 I remember when people didn't get Facebook like people were like well what's the point of this thing right because the network effect hadn't really taken place yet I remember the adoption of mobile phones let alone smartphones all these things which at the early stages i remember the

way people talked about them is the way a lot of people talk about bitcoin now both both on the skeptical side yep and also on the like pro yep in favor of the adoption side and so i'm like okay like there's a lot of really smart brilliant interesting people who are talking i think with anything if there's a lot of like smart interesting you know intelligent trustworthy people who are interested in anything it's probably worth spending more time spending some time on it and at least researching okay there's you know what what's what's going on there so that that's kind of part of part of what it was with me um so i feel like i'm starting to ramble so let me pause there Because I don't know what question I'm answering right now.

So I want to switch gears. I want to talk about just kind of the cultural implications of a lot of what's going on in mainstream media, politics, etc. So one of the aspects of Bitcoin and the crypto world or kind of the ethos behind it is this whole idea of like, don't trust, verify. And it's this idea that our entire lives, I'm 31, so we're about the same age. um we've grown up being told trust institutions right whether it's banks whether it's media organizations whatever like those institutions are the ones who are going to not lead us astray right we can we can trust them and that's the way to go the internet broke that monopoly right and the internet basically exposed the corruption and and the propaganda and like all this stuff

and that shift is going from the institutions now to um verifiable news sources or information sources and also individuals um one of the things that is interesting to me is when you overlay the people who are speaking truth right so whether it's the the rogans the shapiros the kanye's like anybody who who kind of fits in that bucket with this idea of don't trust verify what you get is you get a relationship between the audience and the actual source of information right that the individual not the audience in the institution so you remove that layer you're at the forefront of this right you've got music with no record label right you've got merchandise you're selling directly to people you've got a book you're selling directly to people like people are

subscribing directly to you on twitter and listening to you etc like where does this go right because you're kind of encapsulating now like where we are today but you've been very opportunistic and very kind of smart and forward thinking about how you've navigated up to this point. In your mind, what are you excited about and where do we go here as those institutions continue to lose power and we shift more and more to this individual model? Wow. One thing I think that has already happened, whether or not people realize it and is going to happen more, is I think everyone is, I feel like everyone now is actually their own media company. I agree with that. Yeah. I think every- Explain why you say that though. Yeah. So we're living in a time and place where

individuals are empowered to create and distribute and sell off the power of themselves the tools are essentially free to do it right we're recording this podcast right now we're live streaming it so we're creating content distributing it in real time all over the world like it's it's basically magic like doing something like this this used to cost thousands and thousands of dollars like Like you'd have to go in a studio, pay for studio time, you know, have someone engineering it and do this. And then if you wanted to distribute it, you'd need to, you know, have a record label or distributor, which would place, like think of music. Let's not do podcasts because that's kind of newer. But with music, you need trucks traveling all over the country, literally dropping records into the shops every week.

And then people have to physically go. now you can just record a song on your laptop or in a studio home studio whatever and you can just distribute it immediately you can put it up on youtube on soundcloud if you wanted to get on itunes you can they've got 24 hour turnaround now on like itunes and spotify i could just record a song tomorrow and drop a new single on monday and i could shoot i could shoot the music video over the weekend and like this thing smartphone yep dude this isn't your phone this is like a whole computer computer supercomputer the camera here is better than the most expensive camera in the world like 15 years ago yeah well it's crazy and here's the part to me is it's not only the mechanism that

you're describing it's the scale right so between you and i we have almost half a million followers on twitter yeah right the most popular television shows in america get about half a million people to watch it for an hour yeah it's not right and you and i who we're no smarter than anybody else right but we build up these followings we flip well we might be but well i i was i was gonna be nice before the uh before the twitter the anonymous twitter trolls come after us but uh But, yeah, actually we are. No, but we flip on, you know, live on Twitter and we both tweet it, right, whatever. All of a sudden, we actually can garner a larger audience than some of the most popular television shows in America.

Yeah, it's nuts. But with that responsibility and power – or with that power comes great responsibility, right? And it's this idea of you see the negative effects too because there's other people who have audience who they just start saying crazy shit. Of course. Right. And it's just complete misinformation, et cetera. How do individuals balance those two? How do they, is it a trust thing? Is it a, I trust Zuby and when Zuby talks, I listen because I followed him for 15 years and he's built up that trust?

Or is there some other mechanism in which makes you the good actor and somebody else the bad actor in the minds of an individual? I would certainly, the latter option sounds very frightening. because who would be that authority who determines what's what's real and what's fake and what's true and what's false like i think that would be a that would be a kind of going back to what you've kind of already got but probably making the problem worse isn't that what the social media platforms are doing today it's what that yeah but that's a big problem right that's a big problem they're censoring people shadow banning people um you know people are seeing political biases leaning in and stuff like that that's a problem which i think you know a lot of people are talking about it

And I hope that that does get solved. So I think it's more the former. I think it's coming back down to just that human level interaction, but just on a bigger scale. That's the beautiful thing with the Internet. It's weird with social media because we're, you know, all the stuff we're doing, you're almost not supposed to be able to do. This is what I was saying when I did the meetup last night with people. I was like, we're not all meant to be here. you know like we're not like the way that i was able to set this up and the fact that we're all

connected and the it's crazy you know and i'm there and people then like people are there telling me all this stuff about myself and i'm like i'm almost like why do you know so much about me but of course i put it out there it's like they i'll follow you on twitter for a year it's like of course you know a lot about me yeah but it's odd because this is our first time meeting face to face and human beings aren't really designed for that you know we're supposed to be in these little small tribes and communities what's the weirdest thing somebody said to you on this trip that you've been like wow you really you really know me um oh gosh um man i think maybe like i don't i can't think of one specific thing but i think maybe people just knowing so

much about not just even my views but like even my background especially because i've done all these podcasts and interviews and stuff where people have asked me about growing up in this Saudi Arabia or this or that. So I've had people just kind of want to go deeper and, oh, like when you were talking to Ben Shapiro, you said such and such, like, what do you mean by that? And so I'm like, oh, okay. Like, so yeah, so it's cool, but it's, it's weird. I just think that, I don't think that people have really realized just how magical the time we're living in is and how, and it's going to get crazier. I mean, now there's 4 billion people online now. It's predicted that by 2030 it's going to be 7 billion so the number of years yeah the number of internet users i mean

think of all the people in uh places in africa south america asia who don't yet have full internet access but will within the next 10 years this what's happened in the in the western world in the last 10 years it's like that's going to happen again in even more populous places and i don't think people are even kind of aware, let alone ready for that. So the world is going to keep getting smaller. People are going to keep getting more and more connected. And I think that the opportunity that will come with that is tremendous. I think some of the challenges and risks and dangers, both on an individual level and on a sort of collective community level, have some concerns. I mean, we've already seen that in the past 12 years. You're seeing things like anxiety

and depression and even suicide rising as social media use rises people feeling more lonely all that kind of stuff so it's um it's just a it's a tool it's a tool but you know this thing can be a weapon of mass destruction in there how do you deal with like the digital addiction stuff right because because you have a very large engaged audience right and one of the things i think about a lot is uh if you wanted to 100 optimized for mental health you'd walk away from at all right absolutely you just be like i don't even need a computer right um but it's incredibly powerful tool and especially when you're building a business right and you're kind of building this community etc how do you balance it i think it's about being cognizant and having a level of self

awareness and knowing that the addiction is a genuine risk so if i'm having this conversation with you and i'm i'm not having it but you know you might have times where you're you're using your phone a lot and you you find yourself like reaching for it or wanting to reach it or maybe maybe you checked it two minutes ago and you're checking it again two minutes later like what i i'm very self-aware of stuff like that so like i fight it i'll be like oh no let me you got an android or iphone uh android android yeah all right so on the iphone they have uh now it'll tell you how many notifications you get how much time spent yeah one of the data points is pickups oh okay first time i looked it was like i was picking up my phone 18 times an hour i was like

what the fuck am i doing right but but it was great because by measuring it i became cognizant of it and then i was like all right man can i go five minutes right can i go 10 minutes and and the pickups went down but it was it was scary right imagine picking up an object 500 times a day yeah crazy and it's it's at almost almost everybody at any given moment their phone is within arm's reach for sure even when they sleep yeah right so that's one thing i do i sleep with my phone in a different room ah i sleep with it in a different room and i turn it off so you before you go to bed shut it off leave it shut it off put it in a different room so that and then you go to sleep wake up gotta go in the other room yeah i don't even want to risk having it next to

me you know if i need to wake up in the middle of the night and use the bathroom i don't want to be oh maybe i got some new tweet you know like yeah yeah let me not even run that risk just just put that away and then my brain doesn't i like that think about it yeah um and also to just to de-screen because you get that you know the light i've got the blue light filter but even just for your own sleep just so that you're not staring at a screen and then going straight to bed it's not very good for your sleep and then you know just uh all the physical stuff balancing it with the real world things meeting friends family um going to the gym training exercise all that we're laughing because someone on the live stream just said i'm trying to put my phone down right now and

i can't do it i need help yeah uh speaking to twitter what's the twitter strategy like i can't tell everybody no you gotta tell the secret the the uh the the thing that you've done a great job of is uh you get really really uh high engagement on twitter what is that strategy that you have and it may just be hey i'm authentic right but like what do you kind of think about when you think of twitter yeah um this is this one of the next next quarter i'm right good we're working on a book and course about this ah yeah um what what is it called like how to be good at twitter like I don't know, maybe, like, Twitter domination or something like that. Because you can make money on Twitter, too.

Yeah, so my Twitter strategy, well, a lot of it is about authenticity. It's about having fun, too. If I'm not having fun, I stop. When I've stopped having fun, like, I put it away. If it's getting too much, people are just getting too angry, too. It's like, just let me leave this for a while. Because you've got to maintain a sense of humor. that here that's one thing that also you were talking about what a lot of different these

people and disparate things have in common beyond authenticity and telling the truth it's having a sense of humor as well for sure it's having a sense of humor you we're living in a time where some people are just taking themselves way too darn seriously way too seriously like you you know someone cracks a joke and someone's like well you know it's like it just happened with bill gates did you see this no so bill gates was on uh on stage now let me caveat this whole thing before all the the trolls come out uh i have not watched it i've only seen people tweeting about it okay but from what i gathered from the tweets uh this morning it was bill gates was on stage he was asked about elizabeth warren and uh the wealth tax and he basically was like look i've paid 10

billion dollars in taxes if you wanted me to pay 20 that's fine yeah right but if you want me to basically pay 90 of my wealth right like i start doing some math and i'm basically like you know how much is left right and then supposedly he laughs and he says just kidding but of course that first part of you know bill gates doesn't want to be taxed you know his nine percent as well whatever i'm confused is why he said just kidding well well so again i haven't i haven't seen the whole thing okay that's a concern but but the but the whole thing is you get somebody who it appears to be he was joking so forget whatever the joke was but people maybe they take a piece the quote right and it becomes this whole thing and it's controversy etc and all i could think

about when i was reading these tweets was like people are going to bill gates the guy who's agreed to give away 99 of his wealth of course man dude no one is immune who has almost you know eradicated the globe of polio we're mad at that guy okay it doesn't matter that's the thing to these people it does not like warren buffett gave him all the wealth because he said you're going to be better at doing good for the world than i am so i here take all my money and go do stuff with it it doesn't matter how much good you do how much positivity whatever you're still gonna you just cannot appease certain people crazy and so i don't even try to that's that's one of the things like that's happened to me like that was one switch that went off for me in 2018 it was

like you know i'm not even gonna try yeah you know like if someone just wants to be angry at me or hate on me or write mean comments or whatever just just regardless of what i do all right screw it like yeah okay i'm not i'm not even gonna try to win you over because you're just so weirdly entrenched if you want to have a conversation or you've got a fair criticism or something happy to listen yeah if you're just going to jump in there and just be shouting and angry i'm like dude like whatever mute um you know it's just you're a big muter but not blocker i don't like blocking i really like some people really really push it to the point where it's like okay like there's yeah yeah you're just disrupting stuff here you know um but yeah mute is better i'd rather just

let people like keep shouting but i can't hear it yeah um yeah so uh we were talking about twitter strategy so okay so so coming back to it it's uh yeah it's about it's about having having fun being authentic um i like to start dialogues and debate sometimes i just put stuff up because i want to see kind of what people debate back and forth like i'll put up polls and things like that like i had um one famous poll i did which was um which one's a greater threat to humanity um feminism or climate change and 80 percent of people voted uh feminism but the comments on it were just amazing how did you come up with that like what the fuck went through your head before you tweeted that were you just like look man i really want the trolls today no no no to me it

was actually see it sounds like a trolly question but i think it's actually some people are like this is a stoop this is a stoop i'm like i genuinely like i don't actually think that's a silly question but like i don't actually think that's like uh like when if just on one level it sounds silly but when people sort of like really really think about it especially you know people who recognize some of the issues of modern day feminism it's like that's a fair question and there were there were some really good responses to it as well some people were like well you know because other people were like that and so i mean 30 000 people voted in the poll so it went really far you know it got like i just wanted to see the discussion so i was like

and i didn't put my own opinion yeah people got angry at me and i'm like i was like hey okay so this is one of the things that uh i think twitter has done a great job of doing um accidentally is uh in society off of twitter there are sacred cows you can't talk about like that question you can't ask anybody that like are you crazy like you're you're an asshole right on twitter you actually can ask the question and the fact that 30 000 other people wanted to participate and discuss it it's like hey you know what like that's not your fault that 30 000 other people like you're talking about something that obviously other people want to talk about and the thing about polls on twitter is all anonymous right so when you vote nobody knows

who voted for what and so yeah there's some bias right so if i ask about crypto stuff of course you know your audience yeah but but still it is very very interesting that twitter allows for this conversation to happen that you can't yeah it was amazing and it was amazing how many women voted for feminism by the way that was uh all right so while we're on the topic of twitter uh you're not an american citizen right uh we've got uh president trump who uh has taken twitter and used it as a tool unlike any president in any country in history what is your view of him the twitter usage kind of everything in general in terms of the u.s government versus other countries you've been right because you have you have this really interesting perspective right saudi arabia and

the uk yeah those are pretty different yeah then compare those two to the u.s right now really different so you kind of have a actually like a much more well-rounded view and have lived in those environments what's your take on kind of what's going on uh politically and with trump um yeah it's hilarious it's fantastic that might be the best description ever it's hilarious it's it's brilliant before you elaborate on this uh so i was actually in nigeria in lagos when uh trump uh i think it was that he because what november 4th is election yeah so it was uh on the election night okay the next morning in nigeria i was sitting in the hotel with my buddy and it was it was in the papers right you

know trouble and people were laughing yeah people were just like yo he won but they couldn't believe it right and these weren't americans these were nigerian citizens who were just like you gotta be kidding a lot of people in nigeria like him and but they loved him yeah because he's funny yeah he's funny and then i saw in the ukraine i don't know if you saw this a comedian became president yeah i saw it is that actually going to be a political strategy is just get people who are funny um or is it it's charismatic and that's always been part of the presidential election yeah well it's i think what the the bigger thing is people who are not really sort of in entrenched in that long-term political world can now via the powers of social media and the internet and

having large followings can enter that arena and toss their hat in there and actually be legitimate contenders i mean if my twitter keeps going the way it is i mean even as it is now i could probably run to become an mp in the uk are you gonna do it not now but there's people who want me to would you do it uh in the future maybe sometime but i've got other goals i want to achieve first like it's not i don't want to get entrenched in the politics world right now between now and a time where you would run for politics what is zoobie's life look like like what are you optimizing for so i want to become an internationally known and renowned and successful musician okay and author okay and podcaster and public speaker sounds like you can get that shit

done by the end of this week only those four that's it to begin with do you think that you have to uh will you only be satisfied if you are successful in all four of those or no no would you be okay if you just if i were just like a super global rap star i mean that would be pretty cool it's just kendrick lamar's doing all right he hasn't written a book yet you know like um yeah so what what two rap artists would you pay to listen to them have a pot a weekly podcast oh oh wow um i know exactly who my two are really yeah but you go first really um is it do you mean them doing it together or just having their own ones together oh together together oh gosh um man i i haven't i feel like i need to think about this a little who are yours

kanye west and 50 cent because kanye would be saying all kinds of wild shit and 50 would just be keeping on in the microphone give me my money by monday yeah that would be funny and they would just be calling people out like they would just be absurd yeah the two of those sitting in front of microphones yeah that's actually a good shout and just to the point where uh it's kind of like what's that guy uh uh rob deardick or whatever the the skateboard guy he had a show uh here in the u.s called uh ridiculous okay or ridiculousness or something it was just like kind of like america's funniest home videos but you know like more modern version of it i feel like those two guys alone would just have like their whole whole highlight reel of ridiculousness right

walking hey man we should talk about today i don't know kanye what i saw you were on you know tv and whatever yeah that would be funny we just go wild yeah that would be funny i'm down with that who's the goat oh there's no one goat there's no there's no single one there's no single who are the top three top three jay-z agreed tech nine and eminem i'll give you two of the three eminem and jay-z tech nine is pretty good pretty good come on but i don't know i think he is he hasn't had you know he's yeah yeah tech tech nine's ridiculous dude um so man but it almost depends to me that like that's for me in my that's fair that that is your yeah that's your top three yeah that that's that's mine yeah and it's also a factor of that is like my right had

i've been born 10 years earlier my top three might be like i don't know biggie biggie rakim and uh cool g rap or something right you know and then not destiny's child if i were if i were born 10 years later it might be like j cole kendrick and drake or something you know so it you know people it depends on people's era as well all right before i let you go because then you got to uh get going um aliens you believer not a believer you think they're real you know for some reason when you said aliens i was thinking i was like i am an alien here right now um here's what funny is uh in china so on uh we chat i interviewed a guy who's a ancient alien researcher which a whole thing right um but basically he believes 780 000 years ago there's

It's like, how do you make money off that? There's an alien aircraft that like busted up in the solar system and crashed into Earth or whatever. Crazy stuff. Okay. Somehow, me interviewing an ancient alien researcher got translated in Mandarin onto this very large WeChat channel that Anthony Pompliano interviewed an alien. and somebody i know in china said it to me is that yo dude they think you interviewed an alien that's amazing and so now i can say i actually interviewed a real alien but all right so what believer non-believer yeah i think there's i think there's likely to be

aliens i think the probability is higher that there are than isn't given the vast expenses of a space and the galaxy and the universe so you're more of like a math probability it's gotta yeah yeah it makes sense you think they've visited earth um i mean some of those people on twitter man but my favorite thing uh the favorite thing that anyone's ever answered this with is when asked by aliens they say uh what do you mean we are the aliens hmm right like like basically uh because i all right so the reason why i used to ask the question was uh one night i was laying in bed uh and i turned my girlfriend i said yo this is gonna be weird but uh why does no one ever talk about alien pets we always think of it as like one single

homogeneous like species yeah and they're gonna like come here and they're little like green men or whatever i think they got pets like a little alien like dog or something she was like busy shut off and go to sleep right no i think they would when i think of aliens i think of there being different like a whole ecosystem like a whole just different ecosystem so just just like you know we've got humans and cats and dogs and different types of trees and plants like i think some yeah i'd imagine like another planet but you just got totally different species of all of those things almost like i don't know like pokemon kind of thing yeah like it's it's just a whole another ecosystem and world yeah that's that's how i think of it all right last question for you um

i'm assuming you're familiar with this meme slash the whole truther thing uh in the u.s epstein didn't kill himself of course he didn't what's your thoughts you think no way no way really really like the that's one of the things where like the conspiracy the conspiracy theory is far more believable than the actual story i'll give you that like when that thing happened i mean that that was like one of those like rare bipartisan agreements that was everyone was like no that's fishy literally on twitter there was like congressmen who were like nah no way i remember that like when the news came out i literally remember being shocked at the types of people like people who would be very reserved would never tweet any conspiracy theory whatever

they were immediately like no fucking way there's two ways too many conveniences man Too many conveniences. Oh, the CCTV, like, all just stopped working. Yeah, well, no, come on. Just been taken off watch. Technical issues, right? On someone that high profile. I think it's the perfect example of 50 years ago.

Nobody questions anything. Yeah. The internet breaks up that monopoly. Yeah, true. Like, the people on Twitter being like, no fucking way. Yeah. I was more shocked by how brazen it was. I was like, you guys expect us to believe this?

i was like what what then the story came out i was like oh nothing to see here it's like no no no hang on did you see the guy who was on uh uh television recently he had a dog and uh somebody was interviewing him and they asked him like a super serious question at the end he's like yeah so what just finish up or whatever and then at the very end he just goes i've seen didn't kill himself yeah i didn't see that i was like man it's like harambe remember remember the Harambe was funny yeah Harambe was an inside job

yeah that was funny alright man where can people find you on Twitter on website yeah basically listen

this is my endorsement I've never endorsed a single fucking thing on this podcast go buy the music go buy the t-shirts the hats his book

everything else awesome so I'm ZubyMusic.com Z-U-B-Y Music.com and at Zuby Music on all social media definitely follow me on Twitter

I'm also on YouTube Instagram and Facebook as well at Zuby Music. All right. And the books are on. Yeah, you can get the book at TeamZuby.com as well as the merchandise. My book, Strong Advice, Zuby's Guide to Fitness for Everybody. E-book out now, physical, doing pre-orders, audio book pre-orders coming very soon. And yeah, my podcast, Real Talk with Zuby is available on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Look, man,

you're basically what NBC, CBS, et cetera, used to be. It's just you now. You're the last hope. So keep doing what you're doing. We appreciate it. And we'll have to do this again sometime in the future. I appreciate it, man. Hey, everyone. Pop here. If you like this episode of Off The Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple, Spotify, and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review, and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off The Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts i appreciate you listening and see you next

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