The Watch - The End of Jay-Z, the Omnipresence of Drake, and East Coast vs. West Coast Rap With Wosny Lambre

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

Chris is joined by Ringer staff writer Wosny Lambre for a wide-ranging conversation on his TV-watching habits (1:21), Jay-Z (13:11), Drake (29:44), East Coast vs. West Coast rap (43:16), and why he loves ‘Hacks’ (52:57). Host: Chris Ryan Guest: Wosny Lambre Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This episode is brought to you by Brooks. Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us, the intersection of interest that inspires a run crew, the support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward, and what inspires us to keep going.

Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to the watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me on the other line from Arkham Asylum,

where he has checked himself in is Andy Greenwald. Just kidding, and he couldn't make it today. Yes, we were both pretty disappointed about how last night's basketball game worked out. But Andy, we had a day off today. And I just wanted to, I just wanted to pod with somebody different today. So me and Waz and the Lambrey talked about a lot of different stuff, mostly about rap music.

So probably not like the usual pod for the watch, but I wanted to just chat with Waz about a bunch of different things. We talked about hacks. We talked about JZ. We talked about regionalism. We talked about nostalgia. A wide-ranging conversation that I think anybody who is interested in pop culture will enjoy. Andy and I will be back on Thursday night, Friday morning.

Talk, Top Chef, and Loki. Until then, have a great week, everybody, and check out my conversation with Woz. Now I'm joined for the first time on the Watch Pot by my buddy, Wasney Lambert, who joined the ringer a couple, what, like a month ago, right? Yeah, it's about like six weeks now, I want to say.

You've been, like, getting up shots, though, because now you're, like, on the pods all the time. I wanted to have you on just because I don't think you and I have gotten a chance to talk about, like, pop culture culture stuff in a while. And, you know, I initially texted you. I texted Woz and been like, you want to, like, there are any shows you want to talk about?

I think you wrote back, just hacks. Just hacks. Is that because that's how much what you have time for when it's NBA season, it's postseason, and there's like six to eight hours of basketball on a night, so there's just like, I can watch a half hour show, maybe? Or is it like, do you usually go like for like one show at a time like that? No, really what it is, Chris, is that I'm a TV snob in a way. And I don't like all the shit that everybody else likes, right?

Like, a lot of my friends, God bless them. They'll watch shit like snowfall. I can't do it. Like, there was like a sodomy in the first and second episode during a drug deal. And I was like, I'm out. I can't do it. This is just too, like, surreal for me. So, like, I'm kind of pick.

Like, TV's definitely my favorite of the visual mediums. Uh-huh. But I'm kind of picky about it. I find myself gravitating towards the HBO stuff because it seems to be the most curated. It just has that feel. And so that's why I'm not watching a lot of TV at a time. It's because there's just not a lot of dope stuff out, in my opinion.

Like, for instance, I got Peacock just so I could watch Law & Order the OG episodes. Yeah. SVU, I get it. That's the popular one. That's the one that people are tweeting about all the time. Is that the perception now that SVU has become the people's champ and the law and orders for like your uncle or something like that? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And for me, SVU is, it's a little trashy. I just, that's just my opinion. Like, I'm the Jack McCoy. I'm Lenny Briscoe. That's my Law & Order. I don't do some of that stuff. So that's just an example of, you know, my snobbish tendencies as it pertains to TV. I was watching Law &SvU last night with my wife,

and we watched one that was just basically the plot of hustlers. It's just like a trio of women who drug rich tech bros in New York City. And it's like, it's like I love that show so much. But every once in a while, they will throw in the one liner where you're just like, that's inappropriate, man. It's inappropriate to have like a sick comeback when this is happening. Right. Yeah.

And look, I don't want to say SVU is terrible. I'm just saying like as it compares to, you know, even the Dennis Farina era Law & Order original. I just don't think the writing, the acting, anything is as good as that, right? And I think that's the standard that I've kind of held the Law & Order

franchise too. And so I ignore it now. You feel me? But I understand that people are entertained by it and whatever, they can have it. Do you wind up, because like a lot of the times on this pod we're like kind of chasing whatever's next and chasing like the show that

debuted on Friday or the show that's on Sunday's right now. Do you feel like free of that pressure as just, are you kind of like, I'll watch what I want to watch and that show might be from 2002 or it might be from 1996 or it might be from right now. But like, do you have an internal pressure that you ever put on yourself to like keep up with TV necessarily? No, because I'm in a constant conversation about TV with a lot of the people in my life.

Right. And so there's a few of my friends who understand. understand the stuff that I'm going to be super into. And so we talk about it amongst ourselves, right? And so, like, for instance, like industry. When I watched that show, there were two of my homies who I literally had to call. I'm like, listen, they're finance bros. They're doing drugs.

They're having sex. This is our show. And so that's what ends up happening, right? And to be quite honest, I depend on people. you and Andy to put me on to what I should be watching. Or, you know, I'm a big fan of what they do over at Vulture, right? Sure. Like, I'm depending on people like what we do at the ring or people at Vulture.

Like, I keep up with the quote unquote experts, right, when it comes to what I need to be watching TV-wise. But there's enough people in my life who is passionate about TV as I am. And so I count on them, right? Like, actually the last thing that I watched that wasn't Hax or Mayor of Easttown was the high on the hog joint on Netflix because obviously I'm I'm heavy into food content Munchy's Bon Appetit, rest in peace. I know they came back as woke apatite, but like, you know, the original sauce, the original recipe.

Shout out Claire. She came on the watch once, yeah. Salute to Claire. Molly Baz, I'm still all over your Instagram. So I'm super into food content. And somebody put was like, yo, you should watch the high on the hog joint. And the first episode was set in Benin, which is in Africa, which was one of the outpost during the transatlantic slave trade, right?

And as a Haitian, we actually trace our roots back to Benin, the Congo, and Nigeria. Those are the three main places. So I felt kind of connected to it as a first generation Haitian American. So that was something that I kind of had to watch, right? And so stuff like that will come to my plate and I'll watch it. But yeah, realistically, I'm counting on you, Chris. You know what, though? Because I wanted to talk a little about music stuff with you,

but I remember, you know, really, kind of like around when there was like the Napster Lime Wire Wave and it started to become that you could just get anything for free. But I don't think it had the same kind of feel that it does now with shout at Spotify, but also like with Apple Music. And the way that within music you can sample anything, like you can kind of be like,

I'm just going to check it out. I'm going to skim through this, and I will either add it to my library or not, and I'm already in the, they are, they're already taken their 15 a month from me or whatever it is. And so everything is just kind of going to be, it's like flipping through the stacks in a record store, but you're actually, you just, you're just pulling everything out and listening to it. And I think that that changed the way people interact with music a lot, because it took out the, I have, I have a finite amount of money and time to spend listening to and purchasing music. So it's an, and. active participation in, and it's a choice. It's like, I have to choose this record over that record. And now you don't have to do that. If you pay your monthly fee, you can just basically like mess around with anything. And I feel like that's a little bit where TV is going, where I think that there used to be a reliance on people to tell other people like, hey, check out this show. There's an underrated show that's on this, or this show has gotten much better in the second season. Or if you can rent the DVDs or catch up with this show, catch up a Friday Night Lights.

And now this is kind of like, I find more often than not, people are just like their own animals. when it comes to how they watch TV. And a lot of the times it's like, yeah, I turn on Netflix at the end of the night and I just let it rock. And sometimes I watch like six bakeoffs or sometimes I watch a Scandinavian mystery show. But there doesn't seem to be like basically a water cooler conversations around these shows. Do you feel like that that is something that attracts you to the TV process where it's like you're, you get to talk like you said, you talk about industry with friends? Is it important to have something that's shared? You know, I used to think that it was, and then the insufferability of people online behind the last season of Game of Thrones convinced me that I no longer need to participate in group settings with something that I'm really enjoying.

Because people try their hardest to absolutely ruin the last season of Game of Thrones. Like they, the level of bitching that went on on the internet, like I will never. never, I will not soon forget it to the point where I think there's still a stink on Game of Thrones. Yeah. Probably the most legendary piece of TV content that we're ever going to fucking see. People found the way to ruin it because Benny off and Weiss is like, yo, I dedicate like 10 years to this shit and I'm, I'm going to kind of rush through the last season.

I'm sorry. I'm off of it. I'm over it. I get it. I completely understand how and why it was handled the way it was. It was just like, yeah, we're burnt out. You know, it's over. And we no longer have the source material.

And it's like the amount of time that gets put into the logistics of the show, for me to then be a genius about writing it too, it's a lot. It's a heavy lift. It's a lot to ask. And the bottom line is like the red wedding that happened as an experience, as a TV watcher. Like, you know, hard home. All of these amazing moments that Game of Thrones delivered over the course of the duration of that. show. Those things

happened whether you liked that last season or not so the idea that everybody shat on it. I'm just like, you know what? I don't need it. I don't need the conversation anymore. Y'all participate. Even if people are having it, I'm going to ignore it. Do you think that that, it kind of mirrors sometimes what it's like to, especially during

the postseason of the NBA, when you're watching sports. If you spend a lot of time online, which you and I both do, whether we like it or not, you start to get into a real like everybody is like an armchair quarterback or a backseat driver for coaches especially where it's just like,

I can't believe this guy didn't do this. I can't believe this guy didn't make this adjustment that I would have made. And oftentimes, I'm sure like, what, 90% of the time,

there's some element of it that we don't understand or that goes on behind the scenes that we're not privy to. And the same thing can be said for the way that we engage with a lot of like, especially TV,

where I think people are like, this is how I would have done it or I can't believe they screwed this up in this way. But it doesn't seem to necessarily, I don't know, that kind of criticism doesn't always for me go that far because I like, I prefer to think about things more in terms of aesthetics. Like I turn, how does this show make me feel? How did they, what does this show try to tell us about what it

means to be alive? And then when it comes to the sports stuff, it's like, yeah, I could like second guess Doc Rivers until I have laryngitis, but like there's like bigger issues of play rather than like whether or not one guy played seven minutes and another guy played 12 or 13 minutes. You know what I mean? Yeah, and the thing about the armchair quarterbacking and to bring it back to Thrones, because I think it's an amazing example of this, it's like people killed the showrunners for how they managed the final season. And I'm like, yo, your man, your hero George R.R. Martin has been working on that last damn book for how long now. I don't think it's the last book. Doesn't he have to write two more? Oh, okay. So there you go. Right. So this dude has been working on

that for how long he still can't put it out he's on every single speaking engagement he living high on the hall he's doing football blogging yeah come on man and so your hero if it was so easy he would have been put these damn books out you know the idea that these two dudes were supposed to have this amazing turnaround and deliver this flawless product for you entitled pricks is just insane to me right and so just the idea that people could say oh this sucked it's like bro come on man like have some self-awareness here. Like, these people are doing their best. Let's cut them some slack.

So what's the thing that you're an entitled prick about? What is, like, is it? Oh, I'll tell you. It's Jay-Z albums. So, because I'm such a Jay-Z fanatic, like, I can literally, like, probably wrap all of volume two and three to you right now, front to back, right? Yeah. His newest stuff is whack to me.

I'm sorry. Like, I know what this guy sounds like when he's trying his absolute artist at rapping. And this ain't it. He's been mailing it in for basically, I want to say basically since after Watch the Throne. That's the last dope JZ project from start to finish. And, like, I remember when Magnet Carter Holy Grail came out and I'm like, yo, guys, these raps are terrible. Like, to the standard that Jay Z is at, where, you know, know, for my money, he's pound for pound, probably either first or second best rapper ever.

So when that's the standard and I listen to, you know, some of the newer stuff and I'm just like, this ain't it. You know, so I know some people, there's different, there's two strains of Hove fans. There's people who are just grateful to have any new Hove material. They love them so much. And there's people like me. I'm just like, nah, the highs were just too high for me to settle for this, you know, milk toast, Mailden, you know, soccer dad, Jay-Z.

I just can't do it. No, we're talking about, if you're talking about Thrones and you're talking about endings, Jay ended it. Jay had the perfect ending. You know, I mean, like, I don't think that there's been

an album that I was as obsessed with as Black album, you know, just in terms of, like, the premise of the whole project, the, the S.D. Carter mixtape that kind of preceded it, the actual record being like,

It's just these, what was it, like 10, 11 tracks? Yeah. And it was like with the 1011 best producers. Right. And I think what, M is like the only guest, right? If I remember correctly. Yeah, M is the only guest verse, yo. And it was like the perfect closing statement.

And it's like, it's, it literally is art versus commerce. I mean, like, I'm sure that he wanted to keep rapping. I'm sure that there were other things that he wanted to do. I think he wanted to be a different person. And maybe the black album ends a certain, like, cycle of his on-mic character. Yes. but at the same time, it's like,

what we want as like a fan or as like a participant in the culture of rap music or TV or whatever where it's like we want, we want close chapters and we want that to be the end of the book and then that's it

is often not what works for an artist or for a human being wants to just like keep being a participant in this stuff. But Black album for me was like, you can't do it any better than that. You couldn't put a capstone on a career any better than that.

And I don't know what I really ever expected for him after that. You know, it's like, I guess I was just like, with, you know what I think? It would be, the ideal execution would have been like, can you do three or four more Watch the Thrones of like these sort of like inventive event albums with a collaborator? Yeah. And I think that's what the joint with his wife, Beyonce, was, it was an attempt at recreating that.

But, you know, and to illustrate my point, like, I'm going to use Jay Z's words himself, right? He had an interview at Soho Beach House with Elliot and BDOT of rap radar fame and obviously Elliot worked for title, et cetera, et cetera, whatever. And BDOT was like, yo, you know, there's people saying that the flow was kind of gone, right? Like, you're rapping off beat at times. When was this pretty much? Like recently? Recently.

This interview, okay. Yeah, this interview. It was around the time when he came out with the 4-44 album. It was an interview in support of that album. And Jay said, look, there's times I'm in the studio. I'm with Dion. I'm just letting the beat play. I don't even have headphones on.

I'm just literally talking to the beat. And then he says, go listen to Marcy Me. The flow is there. And he said the beat, I'll never forget these. He said, listen, I'm the most on-time rapper that you probably ever heard. Like, you've never heard a person flow like me before. Yeah. I'm on time on every single beat.

You know that. So if I'm offbeat, it's intentional. Right. So that's all I need to hear. It's like, he's not trying. Like the last song on the album, Marcy Me, is like, oh, this is the vintage. This is peak JZ flow right here. This is what I came to see.

And he does it at the end of the album. Be like, yeah, I can still do it. I just don't. And so I'm not going to settle for that. I'm good. I'm just good. Do you find yourself endlessly engaged with him, though? Like, do you still, like, or are you kind of like, I wish we could put this in the rear view and he could just be an executive.

and like the music wasn't so much apart with it. Do you feel like you always, like, answer the call when, like, I do you, I don't think I've ever said this in public before. But, like, the way that I engage with Jay now is a bit of, I don't want to call it disgust. Is it self-loathing? No, it's like, because, like, I've gotten older and my politics have become more sophisticated,

Like Jay-Z's Uber-capitalist persona and like self-image is so off-putting to me. And that's how I find myself engaging with him now as a public persona. It's like the stuff that we used to think was cool about Hove. I'm not a businessman. I'm a businessman. Me handle my business, damn. Like that's the kind of stuff that we used to think was amazing about Jay. You know, I sold Rockaway for 200 mil, I did this, blah.

Like, it's so extremely off-putting in a time of record inequality in America, right? Yeah. So that's how I find myself engaging with Jay-Z now. It's like, damn, bro, like, how much money is enough, dude? Do you find that, though, that affects the classic records? Like, is it infect your enjoy? No, right. Because, like, I actually had, I think when I was really getting into Jay,

and really starting to like kind of grapple with him I was I was sort of like there's parts of like the coldness with which he wraps about certain things that I find like a little bit I don't know if I would like off putting just sort of like yeah like I think that my like I had a more personal reaction

to like the sort of point of view that he had and then as I think it was around three volume three where I was like if you don't recognize this guy as pound for pound the best rapper probably ever and formally the most inventive and the most kind of like flawless and like here's a line it has three different meanings it completely sets up the next four lines and then the fifth line goes back as like a callback to something I said in the first line which is in fact a reference to something else like you're just like this guy and he's not writing it

down and he actually found a sound that perfectly matched his flow with like the especially when blueprint came out where it was just like Oh, like you just, you like soft rap. Yeah, he unlocked it. Yeah. And, you know, so the thing about it, too, about the capitalism and the sort of, you know, impersonal nature of so much of Hobbes catalog is this is where I get into problems with backpackers. Like, I was explaining to a backpacker once.

I was like, yo, you motherfuckers fronted on B-I-G in real time. This is what you were hating on in real time. B-I-G? Are you shitting me, bro? Right? And so that's why, whatever. But part of the critique of Jay has always been about the materialism and the excess and all of that. But what I would say to that is I rap better than you.

I look better than you. I'm going to take your girl, X, Y, Z. That's foundational to the form. Yeah. The very first raps ever, that was the subject matter. So the braggadocia, the audacity, the basically, you know, coming at you, like, I'm better than you. That is absolutely foundational to rap music from its inception. That's what the attitude was and always has been.

So the idea that we were critiqued God for leaning into that, it's like, all right, you call yourself pure hip hop. This is about as pure as it gets. Yes, I know the message. Yes, I know that, you know, what KRS came and Chuck, Chuck D&M did. afterwards, I understand the concept of conscious rap. And Jay, you know, he's been very self-consciously, not a conscious rapper for most of his for a lion's share of his career, right? But as you said, like just the form of rapping, of lyricism, of like you said, double and triple

entendres and, again, the flow. Like, I know it sounds cliche, but yes, as far as using your voice as an instrument on the record. this guy is the best that's ever done it. So yeah, when I listen to reasonable doubt and he's talking about, you know, drug dealers in Vegas not having enough as much money as him at the craps table,

I'm like, yes, give me more of that. That's what I want. Did you always have an emotional attachment to him? No. Because I was, it was like, for me, I was way more emotionally invested in Nas and in prodigy. So here's the thing. Like, so I'm going to put my age out there.

I'm 34 years old. Yeah, I'm 43. Yeah. So in 1995 as an 8-year-old, when I'm like basically becoming conscious of what the music is that I like and the culture and the clothes and the way we talk into this, I'm like becoming conscious that I'm a hip-hop person, right? And I'm living in Brooklyn, in East Flatbush, Brooklyn at the time.

And Bad Boy is not just ascended. They are just dominant. They are everything. everything. You cannot, you couldn't talk to people about bad boy and specifically what Big was doing.

He was, like, it's, I can't even explain it to you the amount of emotion that was attached to Big. Everybody was emotionally attached to what he was doing in Brooklyn. Like, he felt like he was ours.

He just did. So, of course, he tragically passes away. And there was a void. Like, Nanz was always there, but there was clearly a void of like, who was going to be?

be that person for New York City. Yeah, but Nass was always like the keen observer. Like I think everybody, I mean, I think Nass admitted it himself. Like he's, he's like the guy who was sort of standing off to the side watching everything and noticing the details that nobody else noticed. And when you listen to shootouts or you listen to it's like some of his story songs where he's obviously just like recording things from pieces of conversation, that was, it's pretty much unparalleled from that time.

100% and Nas is somebody who was self-consciously not commercial. Like, he went out of his way to not be commercial. He did what he did on, it was written on the second album, and all of the backpackers had a big connoissement. Oh, he's doing songs and things and that. Everybody felt away about it. But that was kind of it, the big Willie stuff. He did it one time and he moved on.

So somebody had to like sort of step into that void. And Jay-Z came out with Val U. one and it sold a million records, but he hadn't sort of did it yet. It didn't happen until can I get a, you know, hard knock life, volume two. And what really, really, really is when he kind of just took his stamp, put his stamp on, all right, I'm the guy here now, is Jigger, what's my name, which is his own song on the first Rough Riders album. He's not Ruff Riders.

Nope. But his statute was so big that Ruff Riders even was like, no, Jay's, he's, he's, he's going to have a song on the album. And I tell people this all the time. I think that song is the most bombed on per play from Funk Flex probably of my lifetime. Like, you know, whatever.

This is New York City radio dorkery stuff inside baseball stuff. But like Funk Flex, like that bomb drop when he would, when he pushed a button on a new song that he was trying to explain to the city like, this is it or this is the guy or this is what's happening, you know, he would do the fun.

Flex thing. Run it back, play it 20 times in a row. You know, play a one song for 15 minutes straight. It's like performance art almost. And that song specifically was like the moment that Jay was like, all right, it's me now. I still remember being in a budget rent-a-van. I think I was moving. And he in Flex was debuting PSA.

And I think I remember being like, it was like whatever the drive across Brooklyn was, to stopping my car to the van, and then just sitting in the van, and it probably took, like, 45 minutes to get through the entire song, because Flex would just stop it, drop bombs, and then he would just be like, get focused, be clear, this is happening.

And I actually was just like, I have no idea how long this song is. If it is actually 45 minutes, I don't care. It's like, that song, that is one of those songs. It's like, if you want to make a 40-minute version of PSA, I would listen to it. 100%.

And so, yeah, so basically from that time because I wasn't somebody. In 96, like, Jay was 100% a niche thing. There were people, he had a very loyal following. There were people who were on it from the first one. When he heard it and it was like, I have never heard somebody rap like this. But 100% he was niche. He was not some important figure.

There were just people who were really tapped in because he was speaking a language specifically about hustling, selling drugs that only certain people understood what he was saying. It was so deeply coded what he was saying that not everybody caught it right away. Then, of course, he comes out with the second album very self-consciously trying to cross over. He had the Black Street joint, Puffs on the album.

He did the whole thing. He did this famously. They do the Sunshine video. And, you know, Sunshine's a great record, by the way, for the record. That's a great fucking song. I don't know why people pillory it so much. But the video is a little goofy and cheesy. And famously, Dane was like,

Like, you know what? We're done with this. We're going back to what we know. Put South Streets is watching slash where I'm from video. Bulletproof vests in the video. Like, this is what we do. And I think that laid the groundwork for what was going to happen in Volume 2, where he sells a bunch of records. He, you know, he does the groundbreaking hard-knock life tour, which is like the first sort of stadium tour of its kind. Like, everything happens afterwards.

But, like, it didn't happen right away. So I wasn't on board right away. It wasn't until Volume 2. I can admit that. I went back and I started listening to Reasonable and all of that stuff. But I became a Jay fan when he took over. I was a bandwagoner. Yeah.

For me, it wasn't until three. And I think there was probably some latent backpackership for me. But there was also like there was just like a more of a deeply like I felt like more personally attached to Ray and Ghost and Nas and Mobb Deep from that era. And also like that was also like a point where like coming out of Wu Tang and those first half dozen solo records that Wu-Tang put out, it was kind of like,

this is the whole world, man. And anything else that's happening outside of Wu-Tang was like, was peripheral noise and it could be good. But like, for me, it was just like, I can't think about anything but Cuban links or Supreme Clientel or whatever. Now, I was curious about, do you think you'll ever love a rapper the way you love Jay? Or do you think you'll ever have as deeper relationship with a rapper

the way you like have it? with Jay. And because, like, we're obviously there's an age difference, but I do wonder whether there, there is a guy that's your guy. There is a show that's your show or an era of shows that's your show, era of shows or maybe era of movies that's your era of movies. And then at a certain point, you're kind of playing catch up or doing your due diligence to figure it out, but you're never going to love something the way you love that particular thing. So I used to think the answer was no. But then I want to say, by the time, if you're reading this, too late came out, I was like, not only am I super obsessed with the music that Drake puts out,

but like, I'm a Drake head, like, period. Like, this guy might have surpassed Jay for me and my head as far as the music that I feel super duper attached to, right? Like, to me, it's the Drake thing right now. And I think it's different. Here's the difference between my attachment to Jay and my attachment to Drake and what he's doing. When I was 12 years old,

and me and my homies on Saturdays were chilling in my man's basement, his parents' basement, and just listen to rapts and run him back and be like, yo, did you hear what he said and play Lloyd Banks rhymes back and forth for whatever? That's all we were kind of doing with the music, right? When I was listening to Jay, when I remember when my man downloaded freaking blueprint off of MIRC Labor Day weekend in 2001,

and I went to his crib and we sat there and we listened to this album together. That's kind of how we interacted with his music. The thing about Drake and his music now is that it's part of what I do in life, meaning when I'm pre-gaming to go out with the homies, we're playing it. When we at the cookout, it's playing. When I'm at Delilah, it's playing. When I'm at the gym, it's playing. When we're in the car, it's playing.

Like, his music follows me throughout my life in a way where it was different, my interaction with the music that I was listening to when I was 14 years old. It was kind of, we were kind of just dorking out and fanning out. Whereas this shit is part of a lifestyle now, right? Like, the music that this guy's making is part of what I do. And more specifically, like, I wanted to be Jay-Z. I wanted to wear estates.

I did have hard collar button-ups when Jay-Z got rid of jerseys. I did beg my mom to buy me iceberg from Century 21. I wanted to be Jay-Z. I wanted to be fab. I wanted to be these guys when I was younger. Now I just interact with Drake's music on a level that is just integral to my lifestyle and how I live. But like when I was listening to Jay, when like, you know, when the Dynasty album came out and Flex is playing you, me, him and her a trillion times on the radio is a different

interaction that I had with the music. Like, I wasn't living my life. I was a kid. Yeah. You feel me? Whereas now, like, when Drake album come out, I know wherever I'm at that weekend, it's going to be playing. Do you think that that's conscious on the part of Drake to permeate every part of a listener's life? Like, does he want it to be more than music? Does he want it to be like the soundtrack to your life. 100% he's tapped into it. Just, yo, just watch when certified lover boy comes out next month

and I heard that it's dropping on the 23rd. Don't quote me on that, but that's what I heard. That's where everybody comes to the watch to find out about Drake drop dates. For people who may not know, I think he is conscious of that stuff. He's conscious of the internet. Very conscious of how the internet sort of works.

And watch when Drake's album comes out. every single woman's Instagram caption is going to be a line from the album. It's just automatically 100%. But to get back to what you were saying is, you know, my relationship with Drake and his music is never going to be the same as Hope because, again, I don't want to be like him.

But like even somebody like Young Thug, who I think Slime Language 2, that's been my most played album so far this year. That in the cold probably. But like Young Thug is one of my favorite artists ever. No, I don't model my life after Young Thug, right? Like, because I couldn't. Very few people could.

You probably could. But like it's the same thing. It's like slime language is what I'm playing when I have people over, when we're making dinner, when we're doing whatever we're doing. Like these are the guys that I'm listening to. It's these newer kids. It is him. It is Chavik.

It is even somebody like a baby king who I'm really into right now. It is those guys. Or even Kodak Black who's now like sort of problematic. It's tough. He's a Haitian and I want to support him. But he's got some fucked up things going on in his life. But it is those younger guys because I'm not yet living a lifestyle of being in the crib and taking my kids to school, et cetera, et cetera.

Sure. And so what they put out more lines with how I'm living and what I'm doing. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for, that's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back.

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Welch's fruit snacks are now made without any artificial dyes. A snack parents can feel good about and the same delicious taste kids can't get enough of. All made with no artificial dyes. Try Welch's fruit snacks today. Raps been a place where it's hard to age gracefully, right? Like I think Drake, Drake's actually one of like the best of, ever do it in terms of like figuring out a way to stay relevant for such a long period of time. Like I remember, I remember going to see him at SOBs.

God, man, must have been before so far gone came out. Like, like, 09. Yeah, like it was, I went with John Caramonica. We went to SOBs and Drake came on and did, I mean, he did a lot of the songs that would wind up on so far gone, but it was like, it was kind of like obviously that this was going to be a really big deal, like when you saw and you saw also like people's reaction to songs that were not even officially released yet. You realize, like, this dude's really got it.

But, like, the way that he's adapted to the way music has changed, both in terms of it's sonics, but also in terms of the way people get it, like, for somebody who is pretty talented at putting together an album, he has become, like, an really adept off-cycle song dropper. You know, and I think it keeps him in the mix. Like, you have to kind of, like, I don't know that Jay's ever done that. I think Jay, I mean, probably it was just. Jay is probably past the cell by date anyway. But it's really difficult to imagine Jay being like, yeah, here's three songs.

I'll come back in four months with two more. Yeah. And people are not, the people are going to hate hearing this because whatever, Drake has his detractors. There's never been anything like this. The idea that a dude would go 10 years straight. For 10 years, Drake has had a relevant song out. Period. 10 straight years.

And the crazy thing is, it can be argued that Jay-Z was actually never the biggest rapper in the game at any point in his career. Yeah, I mean, even with Black Album, when I think he's probably as good as anyone's ever wrapped his Black Album. But, like, I don't even know. I think Black Album in some ways was looked at as like a personal art exercise, not as like a mass. There was hits on it for sure. I'm just saying, like, I don't think those hits, Encore. Yeah, like, I don't know. But, like, I don't think that those songs were like, black.

No. And it could be argued throughout the course of the whole thing when you talk about even in 98, which is his breakthrough year, that's the year DMX came out. Yeah. And those are, and DMX was insane. Jay himself will tell you DMX was more beloved than he was. Yeah. Insanely huge. And then of course the M&M thing. And then of course the 50 cent thing. It goes on and on. And like at no point this, it can be argued that he was at no point the absolute apex biggest as far as most popular, most commercial. sold artists of his time, right? But we still just recognize him for his greatness. Drake has been the biggest rapper in the game for 10 years. Just period. That's just what it's been. And that's not to knock, obviously Cole and Kendrick and Travis and, you know, even the chance moment, which I'm pretty happy is over.

Like, even like, like, those guys had like big moments and they're big, they're insanely huge in their own. But like, Drake has been it for 10 years, like straight. There's a song out at any given moment. Pick a time in the last 10 years. Drake has a relevant song like nobody's ever done it. It's like you said in rap where longevity is it's almost unrealistic to even aim for that. Right?

Like most people get to a point where it's like, look, I'm be able to do my tours. I'm be able to go to Europe, Australia, Asia, get paper till the day that I die. So the day that I die, and I'm fine. I don't need to be at the forefront of this culture and this music and that rat race and that churn. But Drake has did it. He's done it. It's impossible to nail being too prolific versus being too scarce the way he has. Like when you talk about somebody like Kendrick and Kendrick has pretty much vanished.

You know what I mean? Like I think very consciously has kind of like decided to take a step back. There was like a buzz there for a second when there was that TD, TDE like an album from TDE is coming. and then everybody's like, is it could be Kendrick? It's when Kendrick. And then there was pretty definitively quickly, like, been like,

dude, we're not going to see Kendrick for a minute. Do you think when somebody like Kendrick leaves, leaves the stage cold, like for that for too long, like it runs counter to like their ability to develop any momentum artistically or creatively or at least in their relationship with their audience? I think they've very smartly crafted, marketed a self-image of Kendrick of being this album artist. of him being sort of above the logistics and the mechanics of modern music.

Yeah, being a little bit reclusive. Right. He's crafted that for himself. He's known as an album artist, right? So I think the public expects him to do bodies of work. He's conditioned the public to expect his work to come in a certain form. He's like radio head. Yeah.

Right. Drake only has done the opposite. He's like, who's this rapper you've never heard of named Black Boy J.B. from Memphis? Yeah, I'm going to do a song with him. I'm going to put it out. And it's not going to be affiliated with anything officially Drake. It's just, I'm going to do it, right? Who's this kid blue from Mobile, Alabama, wherever he's from?

DeMarcus cousin passed me his tape and I recorded a verse to it. I'm going to put it out, right? Like, Drake has done, he's like, I'll get on anything damn there. You know, like, he broke little baby who is now basically. basically after the Coles, the Kendricks, and the Drake's, little baby is basically the fourth biggest rapper in the game probably right now. And Drake broke that kid with that record, right? Not that he didn't have a buzz in Atlanta and all of that stuff.

He broke it. Migos with Versace. Drake, like, he's had the opposite sort of mole. And of course, you know, people will say, oh, that's Drake. They say he's always hopping on artists' waves and all of that. And you go ask those artists what that did for their careers. They'd be like, let them hop on my way again. changed it. He changed my life.

Changed his trajectory. Yep. Do you go in much for nostalgia stuff? Like right now, I can't help but really like the Tyler song, Lumberjack, which basically sounds like a mid-aughts gangster girls track. And obviously, like I think Andy and I've talked a lot before about really liking Griselda, you know, because Griselda sounds like the music that we fell in love with when we were first getting into rap. Do you have like a nostalgia touch point or do you prefer stuff that turns the page?

So I definitely had a point where I thought I was past it. I definitely did because, again, I've been so, like, a lot of people would be like, man, you listen to a lot of these new kids. And I'm like, I kind of, it's like a language that you have to learn, right? Young Thugs music is like, it's an acquired taste. Like, you have to really learn how to listen to what this dude makes. And I got so tapped into that. But at the same time, when Drake will put out something like 6 p.m. in New York,

I'm like, yeah, this is it. This is hip-hop. I'm back. You know, like, so it's crazy because last year during the pandemic. I love how you just sat at like Star and Buck at the same time when you said that. Like, last year, I had never been into Freddie Gibbs. I never really gave it a chance. And for whatever reason, I was like, let me throw on this gangster Gibbs real quick.

See what's going on. And it became one of my favorite things to listen to it. Freddie Gibbs is somebody who is, he's doing the thing that you're talking about. He's doing that traditional. sort of boom bap, if you will, type of rap, those type of beads, those type of dirty soul samples with Madlib, who is like a legend in the field of sampling, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, alchemist, like, if you do back-to-back albums with alchemist and Madlib, you're a certain type of rapper.

Yeah, right? You know what I mean? And so I found myself getting into Gibbs. Of course, I'm into what the Griselda guys do. I think Conway is like one of the ones. of the most genius rappers I've ever heard. It's my favorite Gazalda, dude. He's insane.

He is insanely good at rapping. So, yeah, I'm still a sucker for. That's the old head in me, for sure. Definitely, you know, 2001 DJ Clue mixtape, listening to Shells and telling everybody, yo, shells is the next one, right? Billy Bathgate is about to take over the game, fam. A team.

That's it. You know, like, I'm definitely always, I feel like I'm always going to be tapped into that. But I do definitely gravitate to the newer stuff for sure. How did your music taste change when you moved out west? You know, it's crazy because I think right before I moved to Los Angeles, I was getting into the house music wave because I was going to more festivals. Oh.

And I remember the first. first time I went to Made an American in Philly. And I just thought Jay and them was genius for marrying the house EDM for lack of a better word side with the rap side.

It was like, it was like a eureka moment for me. Where I was like, yo, I'm really into house now. Like, I really, really fuck with Calvin Harris. Like, not just the pop stuff that he does that goes crazy. But,

the sort of deeper, deep house root stuff that he gets into. I'm like, yo, this is fire. Like, I really mess with disclosure. Like, so moving out here, that type of music is definitely more conducive to driving through the freaking Laurel Canyon. Yeah. You understand what I'm saying? It's different. You know, there's something to, I do get like whack nostalgia and corny chills every time.

I drive over to Williamsburg Bridge into downtown Manhattan, into the L.E.S. It's like, wow, what a city. Yeah. You know? In town, yeah. There's something about that feeling, for sure.

But I think house music specifically, the vibrations that you get off of that are definitely more L.A. centric to me, right? Like, it's just more, it's just happier, you know? And so I find myself listen to a lot of that more that I'm here on the West Coast for sure. And I think I like stuff like Bay Area and L.A. rap music more now.

Yeah, that, I mean, that definitely happens when you move out here. It's like there's this weird thing where I mean, especially like, I think for our generation growing up, there was still like a pretty decided regionalism to the extent that even like, I took me like a while to get in to Atlanta stuff

and it took me a while to get into like Houston stuff. Like it just even if I could respect UGK., it was like, It took me a minute to be like, oh, this is why Pimsy is like maybe one of the top five rappers ever. Right. It just doesn't, there's certain parts of it that don't quite connect with the East Coast metropolis brain sometimes. But when I moved out here, I think a lot of it became oriented around driving. You know what I mean?

Like, it's interesting to hear you say that stuff about house music because I think so much of it is contextual. Like I remember in the early 2000s, I was interviewing these dudes, James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy, who James Murphy's in the LCD sound system, and they had this production duo called DFA, Death from Above. So they basically had a studio and they would throw dance nights. And I was interviewing them about all these records that they were producing at the time,

like the rapture and stuff like that. And Goldsworthy was basically like the problem with America is you guys have never had an ecstasy revolution. He was like, not enough people in America take ecstasy. And he was like in England, in the 90s, he came and everybody started to dance and just the most square dude in England is still taking a pill

on a Friday night and dancing until five in the morning. And it's like a completely normal part of like English social culture, I guess. And I was like, couldn't be me, man. I'm just an uptight guy listening to punk rock and rap and everything is real, real nervy,

and nobody really dances. But that did change in New York at that time when then like this kind of like post-punk disco feel came in and then the house stuff really exploded. But when you move out here, yeah, it's like if you, you either go to clubs or you drive around a lot. You do both maybe. But like it's like when you drive, it really changes your relationship to your music because it's not like, oh man, it's just like me and five people in an apartment living room just like.

Right. Viving out. It's like, no, you're just in traffic and it's going to be this for a while. And, you know, what's important about what that homie said to you, right, is being here sometimes. for a certain type of music, you have to see it within its own ecosystem to fully grasp it. Like, the first time I went to Oakland

and I heard Bay Area music being played amongst Bay Area people and watch that reactions, like, it gives you a much better understanding of how the music works and functions. Same thing with a festival. Like, you might have your own ideas about what EDM music is

or house music is or whatever. But once you see it in that environment and you see how people are reacting to it, you get an understanding for what the power of the actual music is, right? And I think that's the same thing for me for moving out to the West Coast, right?

Like I literally, like you said, would sit in a basement with five other dudes and listen to rap music and have formal discussions about the lines in the music. The nerdiest, dorkiest thing possible. Whereas like, yeah, if you go to a kickback out here in L.A. and it's outside and it's February and it's 72 degrees and this is the music that's playing, you get a better feel for it

than I could have on the freaking subway at 645 in the morning when it's 18 degrees outside. And you're waiting for the train outside and it's freezing rain sideways. Exactly. It's a little different, right? So your interaction with the music becomes different. from once you see it in its proper element. As somebody who basically professionally talks for a living, do you find yourself, do you think that pods wind up competing for the space that music would normally have for you,

or do they compete with the space that you would spend watching TV or movies? I think for me, it's definitely competing with the pods in the sense that... With the music, like the pods compete with music? Yeah, in the sense that I listen to so many podcasts, not just for entertainment, but like literally for work. It's like, I need to consume this shit so that I can just, so I can then repurpose it for myself. No, I know. I know.

You know what I mean? So it's like, it's part of the job is to listen to people talk about the NBA. Like for me, I feel like it's part of my job to be like, all right, I'm thinking this way. All right. I want to hear what Ricelo has to say about X, Y, and Z. Right? Like, it becomes part of your job as somebody who works in this field. But like, even people who don't, when I don't.

When I talked to me like, yeah, I'm at the gym. I'm listening to a podcast. You know, when I'm in the car, I'm playing a podcast. When I'm cooking in the crib, I'm playing a podcast. So even people who aren't doing this for a living like you and I are, are finding themselves playing pods rather than music 100%. That's the case. Well, I mean, like music winds up changing the, it's like the emotional thermostat.

It's like if you, sometimes you want it to change the temperature and sometimes it just changes the temperature without asking you. I will just be on like a picking up food run. And if I put on a Tom Waits ballad or like a Maguire song, I might just wind up like being kind of shattered when I'm going to pick up a pizza. And I have no intention to. And God bless Rissillo, he doesn't necessarily do that to me. You know, like, Riscilla is just going to be like yelling about,

about Ben Simmons for 20 minutes. And then I'm like, then bet I get the pizza and I come back. And I'm in the same mood that I was when I left the house. That's the thing that music really does is it. really does have a tendency to shape whatever like emotional color palette you're working with, whether you like it or not. Yeah. It's funny.

It's funny you would say that because, you know, some of my favorite stuff is when you're out at a social event and seeing people react to a DJ who knows what the hell he's doing. Right. Like what a DJ is doing is emotionally manipulating the crowd. That's what's happening. Like he's eliciting feelings at his fingertips with what he plays next or how he combines a transition or a blend or whatever. Like that's exactly what it is. It's like you're inciting emotion from people.

Whereas like when I'm listening to Dan Harlan Carlin's hardcore history, I'm not getting hyped. I'm kind of laughing. You're not waiting for the base to drop. No, I'm not. Exactly. And so that is part of it, you know, the emotional part of music. that's not quite the same as podcast where you're literally just trying to learn

about why Joe Manchin refuses to vote to get rid of the filibuster, right? Like, you really just try to figure out. There's no Diplo remix for that. Exactly. Yeah, you know, like when you go out and you hear people play records and really, really, and everything lines up.

It is one of, it's like the singular experience, man. Like the tension between basically the expected and the unexpected. It's like you have the thing that you know this person eventually is going to play. And when he plays it at the right moment, it's going to just completely blow the room up. Versus the,

I can't believe this guy picked this out of the stacks to surprise me or to like change the mood of the night. It's just, it's so great. I haven't done it obviously in a while, but I used to go to shortstop, which is this bar on sunset near Dodger Stadium. And they had some like really great nights like that. What else should we hit before we go?

Do you want to just sing the praises of hacks before I let you go? Hacks is, Hacks is dope in the sense of like the show is so aware that it's a comedy show. And I think I find it to be kind of charming, right? Like, I think that's, it's got heart, but it is aware that they're, we're supposed to be trying to make you laugh in between, which I can appreciate. But I do appreciate the more delicate moments of the show too, right?

Like you could, like, they're doing good stuff with like, the overbearing mom and the trifling sister who steals the husband and the underachieving daughter and like they're doing the delicate interpersonal stuff really well and also trying to make us laugh which I can appreciate so I like it you know like it's it gets heavier at moments than I that I'm even the second half of the season is a lot heavier than the first half for sure yeah you know what I mean that I'm even ready for but I'm I'm into the show. I think I'm at episode seven right now. I'm looking forward to, I've been slowly, you know, unspooling it because I'm like, look, I know I'm not going to have anything else

to watch after I'm done with this, but I've really been enjoying it. Do you like look forward to when the NBA season's over, you're going to have like, I'm going to go get into like a three or four season long show. I'm going to go get like a project going? 100%. What's on the wish list? What's on like the, the Waz's like the summer projects? Man, you know, I'm not really sure. I don't really have a list. I just know I can browse the various streamers that we all now have, right? Whether it be Hulu, Netflix, Peacock, HBO.

Like, the library is so dense and so rich. Like, I didn't watch friends in real time. I might give it a try. Yeah. You know, I'm like, do I really want to watch this show with absolutely zero black people ever? Like, do I feel like doing this? It's like, you know, it's a cultural phenomenon. Sometimes you want to do your own sort of research, right?

Like, I watched The Graduate for the first time, like, two days. I saw you're treating about this. Yeah, yeah. Like, for the first time, I'm like, yo, this movie has come up throughout my life, I'm consuming content dedicated to the history of film, right? Like, this movie's constantly coming up. Let me watch this thing. And I'm just like, the concept that this dude, this awful man,

would have both of these beautiful, insanely beautiful women, smart women would want him. Really? And he's like five foot one? Come on, bro. Come on. Funny movies. It's funny movie though.

It's funny movie. When you go back and watch older movies like that, do they play for you though? Yeah, for sure. For sure. For sure. It could still play for me. And, you know, some of these guys are freaking geniuses, right?

Like HBO Max has been good at curating their movie library. A lot of the TCM, a lot of the Tone Classic movies catalogs. So I'm watching Al Pacino and Serpico and I'm like, yo, this guy, wow. You know? Yeah. Pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good.

Yeah. All right, man. We'll have to have you back on after the NBA season once you've embarked on a watching project. And you're like, you're like, I'm going to keep you abreast as the list develops. and yeah, we'll get something going for sure. All right. You can catch, Wise, on group chat every week.

You'll be hearing a lot more of them as the summer goes on as we get into the fall. A lot of cool projects coming up. Was, thank you so much for joining me on The Watchman. Of course. Thanks for having me. I'm officially a Baransky.