Stat Quo on Signing to Eminem & Dre, Discovering Lil Xan, Lyrical Lemonade & More

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And people don't like people that they're like in competition with, although they'll never like agree that they're in competition. They don't like Vlad. I like Vlad too. Yeah, Vlad. But I'm saying like, everybody make content now. And so everybody looks at like the people who are big doing content and it's just like this weird hate thing. I'm proud of you. I appreciate that, man. Because, you know, we'll talk about it on the thing. We already on the thing. Oh, we started? Yeah, I'll count it. I'm proud of you. It was a time where we was like, I was like, I wasn't your manager, but it was something we were discussing. You remember that? Uh-huh. Yes. And you came over to the house and then I was doing, I was managing. Well, that's it. I don't like the word manager. I feel like manager is like oppressive. Who are you managing? I was working with Cole. Right, right, right. So we was partners. Because it doesn't feel like. Accurate or descriptive of it. It's not a proper description, but me and you were going to work together too. Because I just see how far you've come since then. And it's amazing, man. You are actually, before we even like fully get into your story and everything though, I remember that time period being at your spot downtown. Yes. And I was getting canceled for the first time. Real, real bad. You were panicking. I was depressed. You were panicking. I had, I called Atlantic for you. You did? Yes. Because you had this situation at Atlantic. And I made some calls for you. I was like, dawg, you okay? Okay. Yeah. Because you told me, you're like, listen, like, I know people with serious cases facing fed time. Yes. Like you're like, you're having a bad media cycle. Like you're going to be all right. And it's so crazy to see how much you panicked in and the shit that you've overcome now. Yeah. And now I feel like invincible to that sort of feeling that I had then of like, oh no, everybody's talking shit about me. You don't give a f***. Your guy came in and was like, I hate giving the boss bad news. And I said, man, Adam's been through. I guess you lost part of a stream or something that you did. And he was like, he hated telling you that. I said, man, Adam, Adam, I'm going to get through that. That's nothing. That's nothing. That shit just fall right off his back. No, yeah, that's real. Yeah. We're going to get that stream though. He's talking about a 24 hour stream. We're going to save it. We're going to find a way. Okay, well, there it is. You found a way. But in case you ever do an extremely long stream, don't stream 24 hours straight on YouTube. You got to like, cut it into like 12 hour chunks basically. So, you know, I got my podcast, the third verse. Yeah. I'm just getting started. Why do, why won't people just go live? It makes no sense to just put your content up. You should just go live all the time because the money is significantly different. Well, okay. So if like the method that Vlad has kind of like figured out and it's kind of the one we use, which is like, let's pre-record a podcast and let's cut it into clips and the members who are paying whatever five bucks a month can watch the whole thing ahead of time or in this case, watch it live. And then if you, and then like the clips themselves, like trickling those out, it kind of like helps you to make more money in total. Long term. Yeah. Cause like if we just like live streamed those KripMac interviews, I mean, the problem is is that he's going to swear a million times. So the whole live stream is going to get demonetized. And for us, like putting out the clips one by one allows us to kind of stretch that content out and then also really incentivize people to become members. So it's a combination of both. You'll do a long live and then you cut it up in clips and post it. Well, so this is live right now, but it's only live for the members. So it's going to be like a much smaller amount of people watching it. And then for everybody else, we just like cut it up and like put those clips out kind of slowly, which I feel like it does at the end of the day. But then there's like such an appeal to doing stuff live too. Just cause that engages the audience a lot. I don't want to like them interviewing you, but No, it was fine. How long have you been in the content game? In total. Well, really, like I started a blog in 20, 20 or 2006 that was BMX oriented for 10 years. And then from there, start interviewing BMX riders. And then that kind of transforms into rappers. So no jumper, 11 years content in general, 20 years. Incredible. So when people look at you, I think, and a lot of the people that do content, they believe that you just came from nowhere and like, oh, just got started. That's why you successful. But I know you've been doing it a very long time. Yeah. And we're going to get into it, but you the first person to post Diego. Those and you the first person to post that shit. And I seen it on your shit. Yeah. And that's how I started rocking with him. Yeah, you rocking with him was what made me realize like, uh, you missed out on the vision because like I had known him and just felt like, oh, this kid is like funny and entertaining. But musically, it wasn't really impressive to me. And then I was like, you know, he seems like a handful. And then I realized you signed him and I'm like, oh, maybe I should have been more willing to deal with a handful. Well, I think for him, um, I just fell in love with who he was. I fell in love with the family and DJ food brought him to me. Shout out to DJ food. I haven't seen him in years. Yeah. He's still doing this thing. He brought him to me and I was like, I wanted a Hispanic rapper. Yeah. I just had been going to shows with, with game. And I just seen so how massive the Hispanic hip hop community was. So I just told food one day, I said, man, I want a Hispanic rapper. He brought me Zan. And I'm like, this dude is like a white boy. Yeah. But it was him and Steve Cannon in the car. Shout out Steve Cannon. Yeah. Shout out Steve Cannon. And it was going for me primarily wanting to do the deal with Steve. And then when Zan just back there, it zooted out of his mind. I'm like, dude is a star. He had only one tattoo on his face at the time. Yeah. The 666 on there. But he didn't have all the other stuff. Yeah. He kind of jumped the shark when he did like the drip. That's when I was like, that's too much. Well, I told him to not give more tax, but I told him a lot of stuff. So you want to know a weird thing about the Mexicans in general though, is that you go to a rap show, you realize like, oh, this is the majority of the audience in California. But then meanwhile, the Mexican podcast from my perspective are usually like kind of small in comparison to the black oriented podcast. And then like historically, we haven't really seen like a Mexican rapper get that big. I think because it hasn't been marketed correctly. I think Lefty Gunplay had an opportunity, not to say he's on still have an opportunity, but I think he had a real opportunity to be massive. But the music has to attract everybody. And that's the thing, like you can go in the studio and make something that's incredible. You don't know if the people are going to rock with it. You have no clue. It's just like rolling a dice. And really like Lil Xan, he has such a crazy opportunity and he should have like doubled down and really worked really hard on the music. And instead, like I saw your frustration during that time period where he was kind of like just not taking it serious enough. You remember there was a genius show at South by Southwest that he bailed on at the last minute. I remember you telling him there isn't going to be a second genius show. Like they these industries built on relationships and favors that you do for people. And like you bailing on this one thing is going to basically have like a negative impact on your career going forward. And he just didn't give a fuck. But you know, to his credit, right? The young man, young boy, young man at the time, he had never experienced, he wasn't prepared for this shit. Nothing can prepare you for the music industry. Adam, like so you looking at comments, because I don't look at comments, but I tell artists all the time, don't look at the comments. But people just in the comments, people saying so much disrespectful things about you. And all the positive things that people say people screaming your name, it gets drowned out by the negativity. You know what I'm saying? It's like I told you people like, man, don't do Adam's podcast. That'll hit you. But you know, it's millions of people that tune in faithfully to listen to what you have to say. I don't appreciate that. And so it's like, it was it was tough for him trying to navigate through that. He had his own personal demons before I met him. You know what I'm saying? And so that's why when that whole situation went down, I want to say you jumped out the window and really stood up for me. That's why I'm doing that. That's why this is my first interview with anybody. I've been asked by a lot of people, but I said when I was going to do an interview, I was going to do an interview with you first. Because it was you and it was wack. That really, and you were definitely, and you were definitely around and you stood up for me. And I'll never forget that. I appreciate that. And I kind of soiled my relationship with Lil Xan for a period of time, because when he started kind of blaming everything on you, I was just like, bro, I've seen this dynamic. I know how hard stat went for you. And I know how it was your own demons that your career up and not what stat was bringing to the table. Stat wanted to have you be a worker horse doing every show, being in the studio every night recording and cetera and taking all this shit really serious because me or you know how rare it is to have lightning in a bottle as an artist and to really have motion. It's so unbelievably hard. Even when you have the cosines and the height, et cetera. And it's like that moment is so important that you need to zero in on it and focus 100%. And we as old heads, we get that. And as a young dude, he just didn't really understand how fleeting this moment was. But guess what though? He experienced that. Yeah. Man, we went all around the world. We went everywhere. It's an album debuted in the top 10, man. A lot of people can't say that. He's still performing now off those songs. So like, man, yeah, it didn't pan out probably the way me and you thought it could be because I thought he, I saw him being as bigger than like Billie Eilish. For years, whenever I see Billie Eilish, I see Diego because I felt like she took his whole aesthetic. Yeah. If you can, she started looking like him after a while. She was really into him. Troopy-eyed sort of vibe. Yeah, that whole vibe. She looked like him. But man, the fact that he got to see that, he's from Redlands, California. And he actually was all around the world doing his songs, man, doing his music. He never would have imagined that for himself, man. That's fantastic for him. I love him to this day. I never stopped loving him even through that situation when he was talking. Yeah. And about it like, man, why don't you say something? Man, what do I, I'm not saying nothing about him. I love him. I will forever love him because we made history. Nobody would have ever thought that we could have done that, along with everybody involved, Foo. Like, man, it was a great ride. And yeah, do I wish it would have extended for him? And he might have not, we could have done some things differently. Yeah, but I mean, you could say that about everything. My own personal career, I could have done a lot of things differently. You know what I mean? So I'm happy he got to experience it. I'm happy that I got to know him. I met you through that whole situation. You've been solid ever since I know you. So it's been, it's fantastic. But do you think that, like, looking back on it, do you, like, do you feel like, what were the biggest things that Lil Xan could have done differently that would have potentially made his career what it could have meant? Because to me, I'm going to put Lil Xan in the exact same category as Lefty Gunplay, where they have all the personality, they have the fan base just waiting to embrace them. But they were, they're both committed to making the music themselves. And I think for both of them, they are not talented rappers. Lil Xan should have been in the studio with writers helping him to shape great music, because I don't think he was talented enough recording artists to do it himself. I think he was prepared for, like, knowing how to navigate and make himself big, because he studied YouTube. Yeah. Like, religiously, he would look at YouTube, study it and know what's going on. I think he wasn't prepared for all the circus. Yeah. What people was having to say about him and how it would affect him. So he wasn't prepared for that. And it didn't matter what anyone tells you, you just can't prepare yourself for people and the things that they say on the internet. And they start getting information about you. It's just, you can't prepare yourself for that and then it affects you and then you spiral. So whatever problems that you go into this industry with and you having all these other things going on, it's going to be magnified. I think that was the issue. I think I could, I think I made a mistake. I made was when he did that revolt interview and he said that thing about Tupac. Right. I should have had them pull that or made them play the whole clip. Because they just said that he said he don't rock with Tupac. What he said was, I always loved Biggie more. Even though I'm from California, I was into Biggie. I thought Biggie was a better rapper. It's a lot of people that felt that way. But the way they shaped it is, oh, I don't mess with Tupac. But when they have a sound bite like that, you cannot defeat it. You can't defeat that kind of narrative with truth. But that's why I should have stepped in and said, yo, cut that. I should have done a better job and I didn't do that. That was on me. So I'm not pushing fault. I think so many times in situations we want to push fault on somebody else and say it was their fault or whatever. Okay, you got to look at yourself too. Like, what did I do more so than trying to blame him? Because at the end of the day, we all did that together. Me, him, Foo. Like, it was something that we all came together. So that was something I wasn't on point with. I didn't think I really thought they was going to play the whole sound bite. I didn't know media the way I was supposed to to be like, oh, they're going to clip that up and say, yeah, I think Tupac is boring. And that's exactly what they did. And it was like, damn, I hate him. But I'll give you an example is that with the LaRussell controversy over the past couple of months, like the thing that he said about Lil Wayne was really like pretty tame in context. Like if you actually look at it, like he said, he basically said, some of my goats kind of let me down like as I get older or whatever. Like he's acknowledging that Lil Wayne was one of his favorite rappers of all time. All he was saying was that as he gets deeper into the rap game, he feels like maybe Lil Wayne could have had some more depth or whatever. It's really like a pretty nuanced take. But people don't give a f*** like if you asked the average rap fan, what did the Russell say about Lil Wayne? They're going to say, hey, he did on Lil Wayne like f*** him. Can I say this because I said this on third verse and I said this on Coach United. I'm going to say this on here because it's a bigger platform. OK. I don't think enough rappers acknowledge the guilt that you feel from the type of music that you make. I know me personally, the things that I have written, the things that I've said in song and the success that I have achieved in this business wise and as a writer and as an artist. I feel a little guilt because I know what I have done. It has contributed to that my family, we have things and I have a good life. But I've also said killing a stiller, shooting a die, then a die. F*** your b***h. I've done all these things and I'm man enough to say damn, damn, hold on. I influence somebody negatively. You know what I'm saying? I don't think enough artists that in their latter, the telling of their careers, I think they should be vulnerable because I've had a lot of conversations with artists outside of this type of platform. When we sit around and talk about stuff like that, damn. That's why I never jump down a politician's throat about what they say or what they do. If you make a mistake and I feel like you made a mistake, I would never just be like man, Adam is not because we all have messed up. That goes back to even Diego. Everybody makes mistakes. It's about how you recover from them and acknowledge that you made a mistake. It makes you a better person. That's interesting you say that though because somebody like a little dark or whatever, his content is like a thousand times more violent than anything that you ever put out there. What's the quote is like, you can never convince a man to change his opinion when his paycheck depends on it. Like little dark, granted obviously he's in a different situation facing his case or whatever, but it's just so not helpful or advantageous to his career in any way to acknowledge the fact that he's made music that quite literally has probably prompted or not only like his own drama and insular situations involving people in his life, but has almost certainly influenced random kids to go out and shoot somebody or whatever the case might be. It's just not something that you really are likely to hear rappers talk about even late in their career. It's interesting to hear you say that because I'm sure you were having an off-camera conversation when people who are willing to be vulnerable because even people who are later in their career, it seems like that's not a truth that they're really comfortable wrestling with publicly. Yeah, they never do it. Even if I'm a, if any type of content that you create that influences people negatively, right, and you generate income from, you should have some self-awareness to be like, dang, okay, somebody might have took that literally and not actually as entertainment. You have to be, you got to be self-aware. And I think that's what, I think a lot of artists don't do that. I never come down on artists though because I realized how hard it is to be known. Like the fact that you make content, you, white guy up here making content, hip hop content, everybody knows you. You know how difficult it is to be, to get in this position. Everybody got a phone with a camera on it. And these mic, they sell this everywhere. This table ain't different. They got, you, somebody can buy the same table, all these cameras, all these lights and call themselves Adam 24, right? So, you know, nobody's going to watch that because they're not Adam 22. So when you talk about Lil Wayne, even Lil Russell, you talk about Diego, when people be like, oh man, stat quo, you ain't put no album out with Shady Aftermath, but you knew me. You saw me. I got to that level. You got to, you got to respect people for getting to that place. So sometimes like when your comments like going back to the Lil Russell thing, you got to respect Wayne for where he went. And then you like Lil Durk, even though he talking about what he went through, we still got to respect the fact that he got there and rose up out of that situation. And what is he going to talk about? But what he went through, my thing is, once you get through that, let's have some awareness and acknowledge the fact that, dang, I might have influenced somebody. You know, that's just my opinion. I don't want to be, you know, crashing on nobody else. The thing about it too though is that it's like, even as adults, we do things that we don't want our kids to do. Yeah, facts. You know, like I could go out to the club tonight and drink and smoke or I don't do drugs anymore. But imagine I got drunk enough that I wanted to do drugs and I don't want my kid to grow up and do drugs. And I don't want the young people watching this podcast to go and do drugs. But the reality is, is that a lot of people love doing drugs and a lot of people have made careers off of talking about drugs or, you know, even when it comes to violence and shit like that, like, yes, in one breath, a rapper will tell you that violence is bad and that it fucked up their life, et cetera. But then that same rapper probably also has people in his life that, you know, that he considers like enemies or whatever. And maybe one of them gets killed and maybe he doesn't hop on the internet and celebrate. But maybe probably in his group chat, he's got some jokes to be made or whatever. Like, you know, these are all real parts of life. And a lot of times in rap, like the winners are the people who are willing to be the most real, even if what they're putting out is kind of antisocial. Even somebody like Boosie, who's like probably the most popular podcast guest in rap. I mean, Boosie is somebody who will say things that are kind of, kind of hateful, kind of homophobic, very much considered ignorant by a large percentage of the population. And that's what they love him for. Charleston White is an even way more extreme example. Love Charleston White. Yeah. But I mean, he says things that your teacher or, you know, if you went to your high school class and you played a Charleston White interview clip, they're probably going to kick you out of class, you know? And that's, that's just the reality. Well, in this game too, you got to realize it's about entertainment as well. So you got to be polarizing. You got to at least, you got to, sometimes you got to push a button. Right. Um, I was reading a comment, y'all, y'all talk about this Drake, I said, well, all you ask me is talk about is LeBron. All they talk about is the Yankees, the Dodgers, the Lakers and the Cowboys. And in that way, things ain't changed that much because during your heyday, every, every day, double XL covers, they had like 650 cent covers in one year. That's it. And so, so when you talk about what these people are saying, they're saying what the public want to hear. If the public wanted gospel rap, if the public was like, I want gospel rap, gospel rap would be the hugest thing in the world. You can't blame the artists because they're trying to find a way. I'm just saying as an artist, once you get to a place, it's cool to acknowledge and say, dang, you know what? Man, I kind of like, I was on some shit. Like I shouldn't have said certain words. I didn't kill a nigga every, every line in the song. Like, it's like, and then, and then you see, see some artists. That's their history. But then, then they want to attack politicians quick. Like, oh, you did it for the, okay. So if you're going to attack the politician, can you at least acknowledge that you have had mistakes in your life as well? So we can all be admit that we're not perfect people. Nobody's perfect. We all. But one thing I noticed is that, like, especially when it comes to drill or street rappers, that a lot of times the ones who are able to have really long careers are the ones who really like never let go of the most violent, edgiest shit in their content. Like the guys who keep pushing that, like, you know, even a little dirt, like super late in his career, he discovers King Vaughn and King Vaughn is just this like blood thirsty ass rapper and that completely reignites a little dirt's career. And he makes all these huge ass records from talking about all this street shit. Whereas like for years before that, Dirk's content had kind of been going in this more auto tune, uh, melodic direction, but his career experiences this complete and total rebirth through this dude who we now know was more or less a killer. And I mean, that kind of just says it all about the fact that like his career got extended by the fact that he was willing to keep embracing shit that realistically at that point in his life, maybe he did know better. So let me tell you, the first time I met him was down in Miami. I was at the mall with Wack. And he was just walking around. This was around the time when, um, Game and him was having some issues. Right. Okay. So nice, man. Like a really nice guy. And then the second time I met him, I was working with, with me and Cole was working together and he was shooting the video and he was such a nice guy, man, like a really a good man. So to hear the records and the things that they said was going on, that's just really about what he grew up in. But I'm going to say this. He said in a song that, what did they say? What, uh, what do you see yourself in five years? He said in the feds. So sometimes your words can impact your life in a meaningful way. So I think I remember, I just remember hearing that him say that and I was like, dang, okay, he shot me. Might've shouldn't have said that because that, that shit is, he told, he told, he told his future right there in that run. Right. But like him saying that wouldn't have really mattered that much if he didn't also continue to do things that were pretty much destined to land them in the feds. But do we know he did it? We don't, but you know, the feds don't around too much. You know, if he didn't do it, he probably had a whole bunch of knowledge about it and probably did a bunch of other stuff that could have gone. Can I tell you a fed story? Sure. That very apartment that you came to. Yes. You still have that? No, I don't. Oh. So I used to get a plane tickets from a guy overseas. Okay. And this guy come to find out was stealing people's airline miles. So one morning it was probably like six in the morning. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom at my door. I'm on the toilet because I'm taking my regular morning. Yup. I come out, I still have my pants down to, because I'm like, what's going on? I go to the people, I see four FBI agents outside of my shit, right? Big ass guns. I'm like, I think y'all got the wrong number. He like, are you stealing, been doing? I'm like, huh. Open the door. It's like 30 of them in my hallway, in my spot. 30, Jesus. They came in there, put on my pants, lay me on the ground. I'm like, y'all got the wrong person. He sat me down and he's like, yeah, we doing a sweep right now. One story short, the guy that I was getting the tickets from was getting them fraudulently. And I didn't know that. So they thought, and what he was doing was selling them to other people. I was paying for them direct and using it. I didn't know what he was doing, which come to find out long time after everything, they knew I had nothing to do with it, but I still played out. You know what I mean? And Wack was there for me during that time. He got my help me with my lawyer. You know what I'm saying? He came in there. Did this make the news? No, because I'm not famous, but I think it had it made the news would have been different. But I was facing 20 years in jail for wire fraud. And did you have to actually fight it and get a lawyer? Wack got the lawyer. Oh, really? Wack, he introduced me to the lawyer, the same lawyer that Sugar had, that dude, the wax guy, that blue phase used him too. So shout out to him. And I remember, because they were trying to offer me a plea of seven to 14 months. What? Because, and then Wack came in there. I don't know what made him come by the office because I was almost about to sign it because the lawyer was convincing me like, no, it's a good deal because I was facing 20. Even though they were not going to be able to prove that you had any sort of insider knowledge that this was true. But I had so much friends that have dealt with the feds, you just scared. You just don't know. So you just like, because they was 98%, 99% they went. Man Wack walked in that office like an angel and was like, hell no. You ain't signing that. And Wack was showing the lawyer like, look, this is how I get, he didn't know. And then it changed everything. I had to pay whatever I owed. I paid it fast, went to the court in Dallas with the lawyer. They say, yo, you shouldn't even be in here. You didn't know what was going on. The guy said I didn't know. And I just end up, because I had to get something, I end up getting a year probation. But I was facing 20 years in jail. And I'm saying, going back to what you were saying, the feds ain't no joke. When all these rappers and everything that they dealing with with that fed stuff, the state, okay, that's one thing. But that fed shit is serious. And when I seen that come across with Lil Dirk, I immediately was like, damn, I was hurt for him. And anybody that goes through that, because I never would have imagined, I was in jail, they locked me up. And I'm just like, damn, I remember looking out the window and seeing people walk on the street almost threw up. Because I couldn't believe that that had happened to me. You know what I'm saying? Because I stay out the way. I'm low key. You seem like you would very much avoid being involved in any kind of criminal conspiracy at this point in your life. I didn't know. I had been getting tickets from that guy since 2008. He was introduced to me by a colleague of mine, a homeboy of mine that used to rap in my little crew. And I thought he was just getting like, I never knew what he was doing illegal. You know what I'm saying? Because I was writing it off on my taxes. That's how you know I didn't know. Right. You know what I'm saying? His prices weren't too different than the flight. There were some people that used the travel agent. Right, right. So I use him or the travel agent. I will go between them. So if she can get me one for 250, I use hers. His was 300 every time. That's a huge argument, what you just said, in favor of getting a second opinion when it comes to even something like your lawyer. Because us as non-lawyers, we just kind of assume like the lawyer knows a thousand times more than me about the law. So if he's telling me that I need to take this year or whatever, then you should probably just do it. And the fact that somebody like WAC who's all street smarts, that he was able to like interject himself. And that's insane. So that's why like when I look at even content, I know a lot of people that hate WAC. And I don't care. They can hate him. Right. That he been good to me. So I disagree with a lot of shitty do, but I'll never disagree in front of everybody else. We'll have a personal conversation. Right. And I tell him things like, Hey man, come on, man, we have our talks on everything. So I know it like somebody say, oh man, I don't rock with album 22. I'm like, nah, that's my dog. I don't care what you talk about. That's family for me. Because when that situation went down, you stepped up and said it. And it's a lot of people that were there just like you. They ain't say shit. Yeah. Nah, yeah. I mean, that was just such a no brainer to me because I could more easily put myself in your shoes than his. Like that's a big part of why signing an artist doesn't seem all that attractive to me is because you just know that you're just going to be the one taking all the blame. If anything goes wrong. Yeah. And everything can go right. And then when something doesn't go wrong, right, then you're the one taking the blame for it, despite the fact that you have so much less of an ability to make things go wrong than he did. Name a situation. I just want to know where artists has did any type of deal, been successful. And then they hadn't, they didn't complain about something that went on with their past. And they weren't successful. Oh yeah. It's never happened. Unthinkable. It's never happened. I did it. I signed with Dr. J.A. and Eminem and then when that situation went left, I did an interview like mad. And then I looked back at myself like I was an idiot for saying that. People gave me an opportunity. They gave me a chance. They changed my life. And these people are still in my life right now. How could I ever think anything opposite? But I think at the time you so caught up in like what could have been instead of what actually happened. And what actually happened is, man, you made a shit ton of money with these people and they gave you an opportunity that nobody else did. And your name will live on forever because you was a part of something that was so historic. So how are you going to be mad? Why can't I ever be mad at Dr. Dre? Are you kidding me? It's got changed my existence. Eminem, Paul Rosenberg, Jimmy Ivey, how can I ever be mad at these people? These people changed my life. I get, I live in this life because those people saw that I was suitable enough to be down on what they were doing. Okay, but devil's advocate, I mean, yeah, they made your life better and everything, but they didn't necessarily see the whole plan through, right? Because at a certain point Eminem just got frustrated with you because you weren't necessarily doing things his way, right? Well, that was a mistake that I made for opening my big mouth because he, I'm questioning a man that sold a Crotrillion records telling him that something's not going to work. That's stupid. I was dumb. And so what, it was a song? It was a song called Dance on It. Okay. And Eminem had wrote the hook and he wanted me to say the hook. And I wanted him to stay on the hook. And this is where... And he just wanted to have a verse on it? No, it was just going to be my song, but he wrote the hook and he made the beat. But I was ignorant at the time because as rappers you want to write all your stuff. You're like, oh, ain't nobody writing for me. So I'm like, yeah, I'll use it if you stay on it and give me a million dollars. Yes, I said that. You said give me a million dollars just as a joke because you already signed, right? Yeah, I was signed, but it wasn't a joke. I'm just saying that. And he got so mad, stormed out the studio and Dre was like, why did you say that? I'm like, I was just saying that. He's like, you think he mad? He's like, Dre was like, absolutely. And Dre was like, we got to finish the album. He's done with you. Wow. Right then, I'm like, damn, for real. And they had set it up. They put out the Re-Up. I had the most songs on that. Looking back, I could see what they were doing. They were setting me up to come out because I think that thing went double platinum. And then I was going to be the next thing to drop. But me and my big mouth. And that's what I'm saying. That's why I could never get upset with an artist for saying things out of turn because I said shit out of turn. So I'm going to forget that I was saying stuff out of turn and just, plus you were emotional about your stuff. You're not thinking about, you're not being rational. And I was emotional about my stuff and I apologized to him, begged and pleaded. It was over with. You literally begged and pleaded to his face? Or are you like messaging him or calling him? Absolutely. We wasn't messaging. There's a pre-messaging, right? Yeah. If we was messaging, I think it was Skytale Pages. But I definitely told him to his face. And then I remember he had something, I think where he had like an overdose or something. I sent him this package. This was after I wasn't even with the label anymore. This was publicized? They had an overdose? I don't know. Oh, shit. I don't know if it was or not. But somewhere he was in the hospital. I don't know if it's overdose or something. But I sent him a package so he could recover or whatever. I had some pornoes in there or whatever. And I remember when he got it, somebody was like, he's not mad at me? Because he thought I was going to be mad. I wasn't upset with him. I was grateful to ever have known him and to work with him, to be around him. And then when Cole did the Juice World video, that's where it kind of like we all reconnected for him. Yeah. I was there. DJ was in there. I have been seeing DJ, but Drake, I mean, I was already had reconnected with Drake, but Drake was there. Everybody was there. Mike Tyson came out. And it was just a beautiful moment. You know what I mean? I think Monster is the name of that song. And it just felt like 360 for me because I was working with Cole. They didn't know I was working with Cole. You know, Drake didn't know that. And then I'm just on the set and it was cool. Paul knew, of course. But it was just a whole thing. It just felt like Royce to nine. Everybody was there. It was just a great day, man. It was like three, I think three day shoot. I think that song got like over a billion streams. That song was massive. But okay. So your, from your perspective with Eminem, I always just hear about how particular he is and how interesting his lifestyle is where I've heard people say that he's in the studio from whatever hours it is, like 10 to five. And when it hits five o'clock, you got an alarm and it goes off and he's, boom, he's out of there. Yes. Like he's unbelievably regimented when it comes to the creative process. I think us, I was like, normal people, you think we might be in the studio till five, we might be in the studio till 10, whatever. Like, you know, every day is a little bit up in the air, but I've always heard that, like, possibly because of his experience with drug addiction and rehab, recovery and everything that like he chooses to keep his life like extremely regimented. Is that your experience? Well, I think all of us, everybody, we call it the Dr. Dre school and everybody that came through aftermath, it's like you're graduating from that school working with Dre. And he definitely implemented a lot of Dre's habits into what he does. So that's kind of like how I see it. Dre has just had such a massive influence on Marshall and everybody that's been around him. So when you see somebody that's successful and you see how hard they work and then it resonates and rubs off on you. So with Marshall, it just rubbed off on him seeing Dre. You know what I mean? That type of passion. And M has that type of passion. So he's like, yo, I'm taking and making my own. Whereas Dre working all night, Marshall, like, you know what? Nine to five or ten to such and such. And that's how I'm going to do it. And that was basically because he wanted to make sure he was in his kids' lives. That was his whole thing, you know what I'm saying? And he's a phenomenal father, now grandfather. So, yeah, Dre, I would say probably was the biggest influence more so than anything with some drugs or whatever. That regimented thing, Dre is like that. And so did you kind of get turned on to that workflow? Yes, with Dre. Like everything I am in the studio, everything about like that part of my life, I just took that from him and being around him and watching him and watching how passionate he is and how hard he goes. You know, anybody can like be broke and go hard. Yeah. It's definitely hard. It's when you got billions of dollars and you're still working as if your life depends on it. Yeah. And then Ron James of the night, Duncan backwards, he got all the money in the world. Kevin Durant, these guys got, they'll never not have. It's something deeper than that. They got a passionate burns inside them. Dre, that's that type of shit that Dr. Dre got. Eminem got that too. Yeah. You know what I mean? I tell people the story all the time. I said to Marshall, I'm like, man, like, why, why, like you Eminem, this one, this one time, one of, we had a concept. I mean, you Eminem, you, you already big, you know what I'm saying? He's like, I haven't written her happy birthday yet. That's what he said. He said, I want to write a song that's as big as happy birthday. What the fuck? That's the cold. And then I told him that he said that he's, I don't even remember telling you that. I'm like, that's the coldest shit anyone's ever said. I want to write a song that's as big as happy birthday. But it doesn't feel like Eminem is doing the things that might eventually result in having a song as big as happy birthday. He's still putting out work. He's still putting out music. But most of his music is so like, is the exact opposite of what you would expect to be able to have that sort of mainstream appeal because his music is so dense, literally. But see, he created his own partial of the world that love his dense thing that he's doing. And what they do is they evangelize to other people that aren't necessarily into his vibe. They'll be like, you know what, I do like that. You know what I'm saying? Like when I first heard Rod Wave, for instance, right? Yeah. I'm like, okay, he ain't really rapping. It's some melodic stuff. And then as I kept hearing other people talk to me about it, I found myself sitting in the house like, man, this dude jamming like, oh hell yeah. You know what I'm saying? So sometimes it might not be your thing, but when you get other people, nah, you got to listen to this, you got to listen to that. And you're like, damn, okay, that's cold. You know what I'm saying? But some things you're going to get off top. Like if Taylor Swift would have walked in my office when I was trying to sign, I wouldn't sign Taylor Swift. Right. Why though? Because she just looked plain. It didn't look like it didn't stand out to me. It was like a regular white girl. But she's one of the biggest stars in the world. I would have missed that. And bro, when I go back and I'm the same boat as you were, I'm just not really like primed to be able to evaluate that kind of talent. But I've seen her documentaries and you see the videos of her performing when she's 12, 13 years old or whatever. And it is just like, whoa, like she was very far along in the process of becoming a great artist when she was extremely young. And then she was lucky enough too to have parents that fully embraced it and were willing to move from Pennsylvania to Memphis or not Memphis, but Nashville, just to pursue that. That's pretty incredible. To have that natural talent and work ethic, and then also to have parents who embraced it and let you get this head start where years and years and years of working your ass off that the average person might have had to do, she was able to have parents who embraced her to that level. Who of us would do that? But see, this is why I would have missed it because I feel like artists have to be Halloween costumes. Like, whether you know it or not, somebody can dress up and be Adam. You and your wife are a costume. 2017, 2018-ish era, there was a lot of people dressing up as me for Halloween, which is kind of strange to look back on. What I'm saying to you is, but that's what superstar shit is. Every superstar, you can dress up like them. Eminem, you know what I mean? So when I first seen Taylor Swift, I'm like, what's the costume? So a white girl with some blonde hair and tall look awkward. It didn't hit me like that. So that's why I would have missed it. I would have looked past the talent because I'm talented. I'm extremely talented. I can write anything and I'm dope as f***, but it's deeper than talented to be that superstar. Michael Jackson is talented, but that boy walked around with a monkey. He played all the instruments, but he wore ass out pants with high heels with hair flushing down his back. You know what I'm saying? J Cole's talented, right? But he walked around here looking like a monk with his hair all kind of crazy. Kendrick Lamar had a puppet on the stage with him. You know what I'm saying? In a kung fu outfit. You get what I'm saying? So like the talent, it's not enough in most cases, but with her, I still don't know how she did it because Madonna's a costume. Taylor Swift, is that a costume? She's just like a white girl with blonde hair. And I feel like she is, like her value is just that she's an incredible songwriter above all else. So she just makes like really, really great records. And if you really look at like the value proposition with Taylor Swift, she's not an amazing vocalist. Her singing is okay. She's not a good dancer. Her dancing goes viral all the time for being pretty basic. And then meanwhile, you know, you put her up against people like Adele and Rihanna and shit who have these like world class voices. And I mean, she was able to pull it off just on the basis of being a, I mean, a being able to form a cult of people who love her music. And then also just making really, really good music over and over and over. And really like that's what got to me about Taylor Swift through listening to her. Obviously, I never like listened to her before my wife just started playing it around me all the time. But she just has like so few misses. Like you really go through these projects. So like 15 songs deep. And like you get the song 13, 14, 15, and there's still like really, really good songs. And you know, now I kind of listened to more female singers and like in my head, I'm like forced to compare them to Taylor Swift. I listened to the new Addison Rae album a couple of weeks ago and it's just kind of like, I see the potential. I see how she could kind of get there as time goes by, but she is 4% of a Taylor Swift at this time. Taylor Swift is a whole nother level, but she's incredible, man. And I wish she was signed with me. I wish I had something to do with that business. Shout out to Taylor Swift. But did Lou Zan kind of turn you off to a signing artist? No, I just, no, I still wanted to do it. But what kind of turned me off is just COVID actually. And I just started looking at it and I'm like, I don't really want to do it. It's like, I'm not, I've been blessed. I'm in a good space. Like, I want to do something else for my life. You know what I mean? I work with some artists now, but it's more so like I wouldn't want to sign them to contracts and all that type of shit. I don't even, I don't even want to get involved in that because it's just not, it's not going to end well. They're going to end up hating you regardless of what it is. And I just don't even want to deal with it. I'd rather just help you and how if I can help you. And if I help you and you work out, that's fine, but I don't want nothing from you. I'm cool. I don't need shit. Yeah. And just that responsibility of signing somebody because like I was saying to somebody else on here the other day is like, there is a thing that can happen to you if you're in the music business where your life is one way. Like for me, I go to sleep around midnight every night. But if I were to discover the next little pump or the next juice world or whatever, and if you really believe in them and you have that opportunity, your life is now different. Like now you're going to be out in the club till four in the morning a lot of the time. Now you're going to be out in the studio till six in the morning. And are you willing to adjust your life so that it can basically help facilitate an artist being great? And the thing is, is that when you're thinking about how to spend the rest of your life, you have to compare deciding to sign an artist with every other thing that you could be doing. Because the reality is, is that if I sign like a drill rapper who I think has potential, money wise, I probably would be better off opening a burger restaurant. Yeah. Well, I don't, I don't. Or anything else. I don't even think the interest is the same with the music. Yeah. Yeah. It's different now. It's not the same. So I don't even think it really makes any sense. So if it's something you're not passionate about, you shouldn't be doing it. But plus in the case of me, because I'm not trying to be just out in the club at three, four in the morning, I will have one of my younger colleagues that's trying to break in the business and kind of put them in that direction. And then eventually let that person just take over to where I don't even have to deal with it. And then I'll just get a percentage off of what they get and they can just have it and do everything. Because at this point right now, I just don't foresee myself going on tour. I mean, I went on tour with him. I slept in the back of a bus eating Arby's sandwiches. You saw me eat Panda Express. I don't eat like that. You know what I'm saying? I have a... You was like, I had that yesterday. I'm like, I don't do that type of stuff. So I was eating Arby's. Arby's, bruh. Arby's. We went somewhere and they gave us reindeer. I think it was in like Norway or something. I've had this experience too. I'm like, reindeer? It was so crazy. I would never do that right now. I would never go on tour with somebody and be going from show to show and taking a shower and these little rinky dink hotels. Part of that sounds really fun though. I'm cool. Not for me. I did it. So it's like, I don't... That's why I don't even travel as much as I would want to because of the experience of going on the road and going through a different airport after airport, hotel after hotel. I'm just like, oh, it just sounds too much. You're kind of like last of a dying breed. It's not like you're the last generation that this happened to, but where you went through the real A&R process where you got signed and then you had massive superstar, successful artists who really worked hard to try to develop you. But okay, before we even get into that though, tell me how your life went in the lead up to signing to Shady and Aftermath. How hot did you get in the streets and what was your career like before that? Okay, I'm from Atlanta. I went to the University of Florida. I graduated from college. I'm like, man, I wanted to go try to get a job and all the jobs it was offering was like working at Walmart, Blockbuster. That was a video store at the time. I'm not going to go to college and come out and work in these places. I always loved music. So Bonecrusher had a video shoot for Never Scared. Right. You're in that video? No. Okay. The entire video player had just come out where you could record people saying things. Right? I said this just on my podcast, Third Verse. I'm doing that again. But I went down to that video shoot with that MP3 player, Bonecrusher, Big Boy from Outcast, Ludacris, T.I., Killer Mike, everybody that was anybody in Atlanta was at this video shoot. I went up to each one of them with my MP3 player and told them that my name was DJ Stac Quo. Right. When I did that, they like, yo, this your boy, Big Boy from Outcast. I'm rocking with DJ Stac Quo, the number one in the ATL and around the world. I got drops from everybody that's hot in the streets of Atlanta. I went to the studio, loaded the MP3 player up. I dropped DJ from all those drops. That's so smart. Holy shit. I made a mixtape, right? In between every song, I said T.I. speaks, Killer Mike speaks, Lil John speaks, Big Boy from Outcast speaks, Ludacris speaks. I had that in between each song. On the front cover of the mixtape, I took every record label's logo that was hot at the time, Dev Jan, Rockefeller, and I put that on the front and it said Stac Quo, Underground Atlanta, Volume 1. That's the way when you saw the CD, you said, oh, shit, all these people on it. And then you looked on the back and you said, oh, you see these names of people that was hot? I just needed you to listen. And when they listen, I got hot. Wow. That's crazy. That's how I did it. And from that, it was a dude named Mike Wio who knew Mailman and I was dealing with a girl at the time who gave me, let me use her companion pass. She took my demo, that very CD, to Mailman. She went, I always say she cheated on me, but she said she did. She took it over to Mailman's house, played it for Mailman. Mailman loved it. He told Mike Wio, I met with him in Atlanta. I flew out to LA, right? Because I flew out to LA, I knew B Cox and a dude named Marco, Brian Michael Cox, who worked with Jermaine Dupri. I knew him, so I was in the studio hanging out with them, just hanging around because I had been hanging around with them in Atlanta or whatever. Mailman met up with me and said, I would rap for him in the parking lot outside with B Cox. He took me into the studio. I walked in the studio, it was Dr. Dre, LaVar Earrington, and they was in there listening to some shit. And it was just crazy ass beat. And Dre was like, yo, come to the front, I want you to check something out. Went to the front. This crazy ass beat is on. He's like, you f***ing with that? I'm like, yeah. So I started like, he's like, yo, I'm giving him, I immediately just started writing to it because I had an incident with Scarface before in Atlanta and I messed up. And I said, if I ever get back in the studio with a legend, I'll never f*** up again. How did he mess it up with Scarface? Because when I went in the studio with him and he wanted me to rap, I was so nervous because this dude was my idol. I had met him at one of them DJ conferences. I'm not one of them, how can I be down? I met him there because I sent my demo to Dev Jam South, India. India Fendrick, which was the sister of my future manager, Zeke, gave it to this dude named G. Wildes and he gave it to Scarface. Scarface, he's like, oh, I had a song called GA State. Oh, you do GA State, nigga. It was Scarface, Kevin Liles, we in Scarface hotel room. Scarface is in his boxers and they playing my music. I think Kevin Black was there from Interscope. And long story short, Scarface invited me to the studio, Patchwork studio. I went in, I was so nervous. He was like, man, you wack and got rid of me because I couldn't get my shit together. I just was so scared because it was Scarface, right? But you were trying to rap? I was trying to rap the verse that I had wrote to the song that I had already wrote. But that was one of my first times in the studio with somebody of his magnitude. So when I got in with Dre, I'm like, yo, I'll never do that again. Because you don't get too many shots at this shit. So when I got in there with Dre, when that beat was on, I immediately, I don't know what got into me. I immediately start rapping shit to Dre and telling Dre, you need to say this. I'm trying to write Dre's rhymes. I'm like, you need to say this. I'm just spitting it to him. You felt like he appreciated that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's like, nah, you go in the booth. So I go in the booth. Like I had wrote something for him. He's like, nah, what would you say on this shit? And I just start busting. And then he's like, yo, he came in the booth with me. He set up another mic. And that's what it was. When I laid the part, he had one in there first to try to lay it. And I was falling asleep because I'm not connected. You don't know that. But I was falling asleep. How many hours you sleep on average per night? Probably about three or four. That's it? I don't sleep enough. But that mean why you could just fall asleep just sitting around? Oh, man, dawg, it's bad. Really? I took a nap before I came in so you don't have to experience that. Dre calls me young sleep. But he was in the booth trying to wrap my rhyme. And I was falling asleep. He's like, nah, you got to come in and give me energy. So Vito, which was the engineer at the time, set up another microphone. So I'm wrapping the rhyme that I wrote for him. We wrapping it together. I'm telling him, you say it like this or whatever. He's like, nah, what would you say? And I just start busting. I had all these rhymes in my mind. You know what I'm saying? And he just going off. By this time, he had like two or three pints of Hennessy. And he's yelling in the background, this nigga the greatest. This nigga the realest stat quo. Nigga ATL, nigga. Holy shit. We going down south for you niggas. He going crazy. I'm rapping. Boom. I'm like, OK, cool. This is a good moment. We come out of the studio. I mean, we come out of the vocal booth. He looks at the engineer. You got that? I'm like, you got that? What are you talking about? This dude, Dre, gave me the CD of that. I remember going into the shower because he had a shower. I turned the shower on in that bathroom at the studio. I record one in the studio. I turned the water on. I called my mama. I was crying. Like, mama, we rich. Because I knew what I was going to do with that CD. It was nine minutes long of, I mean, Dre was the hottest shit in the world. This was G-Unit time. This was when 50 was just doing his thing. It was nine minutes. It's called The Future. Y'all can look it up. Nine minutes of this man saying, I'm the greatest shit ever. I took that. I cut it into three parts. The dude, DJ Ski. You know, DJ Ski. We did a mixtape. The second volume of the one where I had everybody's names on the side, we cut that shit into three parts. Dr. Dre. I put it out on the street. It was Mix Show Power Summit on Puerto Rico. I knew another case slide from the West Side, the radio personality, you remember her? She had passes to get into that event. So me and her was, you know, kind of had that little thing going on. And I stayed with her at the hotel. She got me a pass. I went to all the events with my Mix CD and I was putting it on everybody's table. And it's got my picture and on the back is Dr. Dre. And it's this hard ass beat and Dre telling everybody that he's the greatest motherf***er in the world. When I came back to LA from that, I remember Keira, that she work at Amazon now, calling me like, nigga, did you put out a CD of Dre? I'm like, yeah, he gave it to me. You said I could put it out. I ain't know nothing about the music business. I got back. But this is mixtape era where that kind of shit, like who was going to tell you not to do it, right? Exactly. Whereas now you get a Dr. Dre verse. It's like, I could put it on YouTube. Maybe it's going to get taken down by, I can't put it on Spotify or Apple. It was just kind of like everything. When it's in the street, it's in the streets. It's gone. I came back. I had a, I was staying off, what's some shit? It wasn't Airbnb. It was corporate housing. They had a department for me. Cause by this time, at first I was staying at Millman house, but he got me, Dre got me a place and I was staying out here working with them every day. But I remember they made me leave. Said you got to go back to Atlanta. I thought my career was over. I thought it was done cause I was finished. And then when I got back to Atlanta, man, the phone started lighting up. Niggas, they found me. Puff picked me up. We flew to New York. He wanted to sign me. Everybody wanted me cause I was, I was on fire. But then you doubled back and went back to Dre? Yeah, because when I went, me and Puff, he just wasn't my kind of guy. You could tell? Okay. So. Oh, everybody got a story about this. Yeah. We went to Mr. Childs. Okay. It was me, my manager. It was Puff. It was his girl, wife, Kim. And it was Mr. Bentley. It's my first time ever being in Mr. Childs. Yeah. We in there, food come out. Him and Bentley started eating off the same fork. Me and Kim look at each other like, and I was like, oh no, I ain't. So like we got to play the orange chicken in front of us and it's like, you eat a bite and then I. He put his fork in that man's mouth. Oh. Now I don't have nothing. It was just, I'm from Atlanta. I ain't know nothing about that at the time. I don't get it. That's so crazy. I don't know from where I'm from. If I'm gonna eat some of yours, I'm gonna take my fork and I'm gonna get it. And then I'm with my girl. I'm gonna like, let me try that. I'm gonna get my and dump it into my plate. They was, he dipped it, fed it to him. Then fed him. It just didn't sit right with me. Right. And then we went to the club after that and he had these Kristal bottles. And I remember my manager told me, he's like, man, you know, no Kristal bottles, it's worth a lot of money. I'm like, what? And so everybody popping the bottle drinking. I leave the club. I got three bottles. I'm holding them like this. You know what I'm saying? I'm about to sell these shit. I ain't know what's going on. Puff like, what are you doing? I gotta sell these. And then before that, when we were flying up, it was Puff, my manager, Steve Stout was on that plane. It was a private plane. And Puff was like, man, anything you want on here, playboy, you know what I'm saying? We got everything you want. So I remember they had fried chicken and macaroni and cheese. And so the lady came by, she's like, what do you want? I said, well, OK, it's fried chicken macaroni and cheese. I want some collard greens and cornbread too. And she's like, well, we don't have that. Puff was asleep. I'm like, he one eye opened up. I'm like, Puff, you said I can have anything. Now I got collard greens and cornbread. He just looked at me like this, rolled his eyes and rolled over. We are on a plane. We're on a plane. The nigga said he had everything, though, Adam. He said he had everything. He lying. You know what I'm saying? And then this was around the time when he did that Mohawk shit. Yeah, yeah. He was, did he run the city? Yeah. And then when he had that Mohawk and I'm just like, this ain't really my type of cat. And then so he got word because everybody was offering me a deal. It was a bunch of people. He got word that I didn't like him. And I remember him calling me. He's like, playboy, which it just ain't no liking contest. Playboy. It's ain't about liking. You think they ain't about you liking me. It's about us getting some money, playboy. They say we're going to get some money, huh? Let's get some money. And then everybody around when I just like the staff and the people, they just look like it wasn't right. And with Draidenham, everybody was right. Yeah. Everybody had nice cars. Everybody looked healthy. It just was right. You know what I'm saying? And then they were just hot as fish grease too. And I just resonated with the sound and the music. So I decided to do that. You know what I mean? But I never had my main issue at him is that I didn't have an identity as an artist. That thing we talk about that costume, like you have an identity as a pop, as a Potter or as a CEO of a media empire. Maybe a little too much of an identity. But it's good, though. It works. Yeah. It works. You have to have that. Right. Like I have an identity as an executive. When people know you play me that music, I'm going to tell you straight up. I don't care if it hurts your feelings or not. Like I'm going to tell you that if that shit's good or not. I'm going to tell you that that's identity. That's the type of shit you got to have as an artist. You can't like GZ was was popping around the time. He's a drug kingpin. I rap better than GZ. Yeah. But he the snowman. He's got the storyline. He the snowman. And that shit sounds so hard, but on some just bar for bar. Yeah. Duh. I can rap it. T. I can rap his ass off. But he's also the rubber band man. He created trap music, Gucci man, ice cream man. Like you you got to have you can't just come out here and just have some bars and think you're going to be a superstar. And I was signed to such a juggernaut. You know, I'm saying 50 cent. They can't come out to 50 cent with some, you know what I mean? So that's kind of like how I got caught up in the 50 narrative was so defined. Yes. M&M narrative was so defined. Yes. But then meanwhile, your image was like cool, dude, from Good Rapper. What is it? But not necessarily like the most street dude. Not at all. You know, not necessarily, you're not like the king gangster. You're just like a dope rapper, which is, you know, like I see in a viral clip going around a Sean Cawden basically talking about how, you know, rap nowadays, especially is just all about storytelling. And once the fans start to view you as a goofy, whose public narrative is defined by his relationship drama or whatever, then that just like it could just slay your career. And it is very petty, but it's like with the rap fans, like they feel like they have so much to choose from that it could be the pettiest, silliest little narrative. But as soon as they're able to pin it to you and especially now it's a race to to label you a artist who fell off. Because everybody wants to make a couple of thousand dollars by making a YouTube video or a TikTok saying that you fell off. So they race to do it before there's actually legitimate evidence of you falling off. Like, for instance, like Lil Baby has really kind of been like the byproduct of this because so many people talk about him and like academics really like advanced that narrative more than anybody ever could have. And so Lil Baby maybe would have had like many more years of people just kind of accepting him as being like a lit rapper or whatever. But once that narrative starts to fall into place, you've fallen off, you see artists kind of just start scrambling. I'm going to say I love academics, too. Like I love what he does and I think he's super important. So that narrative and that thing that he does about people falling off, that's important because the fans want that. That's like the Drake album that's coming out. Yeah, there's a significant number of people that are only interested in hearing his album so that they can say it's trash. That's a fact. When Kendrick dropped G&X, that was a significant number of people that only wanted to hear that because they wanted to make they wanted to see if he fell off after him, that battle. Yeah. And even like me listening to G&X, I was like a commentator or a media personality is like I listen to it and I'm like, I was pretty dope out. I'm like, I listen to it a few more times before I really have an opinion on it. But that is not marketable from a social media standpoint. The marketable aspect would be you race through it. You listen to a minute or two of each song and then you get on Twitter and he says the worst out of my ever heard Kendrick fell off. Exactly. That is the one that's going to win you the day on Twitter and get you all the quotes and stuff like that. Whereas like I want to sit with this album for a couple of days. You know, I'm the type of person where like throughout my life, I've never really been the kind of guy who's just like listening to an album. The moment it came out, you know, I'll get to it. I'll take my time, but that doesn't really apply to this modern landscape. Like I'm already plotting on when the Drake album comes out. What's the best kind of content for us? Like doing a listening party or doing a podcast where we listen to each song and talk about our like what is the best method? Because realistically, a couple of days after it's out, the whole marketplace changes where now a couple of days after it's out, maybe people are interested in hearing like in depth breakdowns of the content. But as far as just that initial reaction, you got a race to get that shit out. You got to be the first one to it. Oh, yeah. Like I was just telling Justin, I was like, yo, when that Drake album come out, we're going live immediately. Yeah. We're like, we're not waiting. We're going, we're going to be the first video up there because people want to see it. They want to they want to see what you have to say. And he is a proclaimed Drake hater. I don't hate Drake. He say you don't hate Drake, but I don't hate Drake. Right. I like Drake's music. I'm clearly more Kendrick than I am Drake because of my relationship with Top Dog or whatever. But I don't hate Drake. I appreciate his music. I think he's extra dope. His one of his main producers is a guy that I consider to be my brother, which is Boy Wonder. And I have a Drake playlist on my phone. I think his music is phenomenal. I said on third verse, when I'm at the pool, I'm listening to Drake, though. I love Kendrick. I think he's dope. But if I'm swimming in the summertime, I'm not playing some of that shit. Maybe G&X got some of that on it. But generally, as a catalog, you weren't playing a lot of that music when you just at the, you know, it wasn't like that. Drake got a whole a thousand songs that just put the playlist on and we swim in. And and generally, it's pretty clean, too. So if you got your kids out, you can put it on. Exactly. Yeah, you're right. I listen to Drake around my kid. And meanwhile, like I put G&X on around my kid and my girl, like, turned it off after one song because he's saying the F word so much. And like, you know, people probably who don't have kids are listening to that. They're like, what the fuck? Like Kendrick? Like it's not offensive music or whatever. But he do be swearing. Yeah. And like, if you're a strict parent, that's just don't really apply. Drake be swearing, too, but it just hits a little different. Well, you just you could just put the clean one on. This is exactly you. More into the melodic stuff of it anyway. But but me, I love them both the same. I think they're both important. But as far as like, hating on shit, there's a large market and it's a lot of money to be made to be a hater. I mean, Skip Bayless whole career. Yeah. The biggest thing he did was say LeBron was trash. Mm hmm. And the reason why Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless, that first take ship was so interesting. It's because of their dynamic, their dynamic. Skip Love the Cowboys, which is massive. Steve, Stephen A. Smith hated the Cowboys. Right. Skip Hater LeBron, Stephen A. Smith love LeBron. Right. And they clashed on that. And all they talked about was LeBron Cowboys, LeBron Cowboys. That's why when people be like, Kendrick Drake, like we doing it right now. This shit going to go crazy when you put it out because we talking about this. Right. And we going to keep talking about it. Adam, you know, natural built in audience. It's the game. Yeah. This is what we doing. But we're talking about. I read an article the other day and I'm not like an avid sports media watcher, but I, you know, observe it from a distance. But like they were basically saying that the state of ESPN is such that every single show now is a bunch of talking heads basically doing a podcast taking on. And there's always going to be one person who takes on an opinion that is controversial enough that everybody else at the table is going to disagree with it and argue with it. And the problem is, is that there are just not that many plausible negative opinions to be had, like, and especially in sports, where everything is like not that subjective. It's like, to say that LeBron sucks when we can all go on, you know, any website or any AI and ask, like, you know, where's LeBron rank as far as the greatest players of all time. And they're going to say, hey, he scored a million points and he was a great player and he was extremely high paid. And he had all these championships, et cetera. It's like it's kind of grading to people. But like one thing I tell the people that I podcast with is like, listen, we got fine shit to argue about because if I could, a lot of times, the biggest stories are the least interesting things to talk about, unless there is a component of it that is worth having an argument or a discussion about because, OK, if so and so rapper gets killed, we come on the podcast and sometimes the whole conversation is just like, damn, that's fucked up. And that is just not interesting. But meanwhile, the Gucci and GZ thing, there's all these different moments where you could say, what was pusha, he's deep thinking, why, why did he do this? Why did Gucci tell? Why did you know this is what Gucci should have done? He should have done it like this, et cetera. That will make for an interesting conversation. But a lot of times the biggest stories is not a lot to dig into because they're so simple and really depressing. It's so crazy to me where people talk about what Gucci should have done. Right. What's your take on that? I probably want to done a song. Right. Yeah. I think the song was the biggest misstep of all. I think I probably want to done a song, but I also am not him. And I don't know what he was experiencing at the time, but me personally, I want to done a song. Right. Um, I love Gucci. I love his music. I remember one Christmas we was at Onyx in Atlanta. Me and Gucci just sitting there just chopping it up. Christmas night at the strip club playing pool. And he was just picking my brain, asking me about Dre M and 50. You know, he hadn't had, I guess, interactions with them. So he was asking me about how they were. And, you know, because he's one of the greatest A&Rs in hip hop history. As far as like what he has contributed to the game. And it's just so funny to me that now you got people saying he or he this, he that, he this, he that being negative about them. Just like, let's just throw his whole history out because of this incident. I mean, Gucci, what, 50 years old? 47. I mean, pretty much he's 50 years old and whatever whatever's going on. You know, people, people got to stop with this, like trying to judge and he this, he that, okay, man, let that, let that situation play out the way it play out. That's my thing. It's not, it's not for me to be telling him what he shouldn't, should or shouldn't do. He should do whatever he want to do. He's a man. When he go to the bathroom, are y'all holding his, his right. But don't you think it's fair for us to kind of consider him a hypocrite or that he was doing something out of character? Who's not for sure? But here on the internet, being a hypocrite is pretty much the number one thing that people are going to want to discuss. Everybody's a hypocrite in their own life. Right. So this, this is what I'm saying. When you wake up in the morning, it's a mirror in front of you. And when you look in that mirror, you can, you can think of a million things that you probably have done that someone would do differently to you. Right. So when it comes to that, you have to have, give people grace and not be, be so quick to be like, oh, he did it. Hey man. Okay, he did that. Cool. All right. I'm not going to forego all he did in his career. And let's say this, if Poo Shicey didn't rob him, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. Right. So we just going to be like, okay, we going to say the robbing was right. But in this backwards ass culture, yes, the robbing is just fine, but telling is not. No, that's not right. I'm just saying, but it is consistent because if you listen to Poo Shicey's music, he's telling you, I'm a robber. I take shit. I respect. Gucci man, if you listen to his music, he's telling you, I'm a gangster. I don't talk to police. I respect Poo Shicey for doing what he felt like was best. I respect that because that's what he wanted to do. I wouldn't have done that. And I disagree with what he did, but I can respect him doing it and sticking to what he say he is. And he's young. I still don't think it was the right thing to do. Right. You know what I'm saying? I think that could have been handled differently. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? If that was me in that situation, if I'm with an artist and they are that upset, first of all, I wouldn't meet them at the studio. If I have an artist named Poo Shicey, I'm not meeting him at the studio. His name's not Poo Nice Guys. Poo Shicey. And it's clear to me that Gucci didn't really expect things to go in that direction because he had two security guards with him, which is probably standard for Gucci, but the security guards weren't in the actual studio. One of them was outside in the car and one of them, I think, was in the lobby, which tells you a lot because it would be very normal for Gucci to say, Hey, I got this artist coming in. He's kind of a hothead. I want you to stay relatively close to me. He should have let him go and then took an override on the rest of his career. He's like, OK, you know what? You can go. I keep the old catalog. I take 15, 20 percent going for it and be done with it. That's what I would have done. He was trying to, Gucci was still probably trying to hang on and do future projects. Yeah. I would have just let him go and then got my money back from the future stuff that he did. Yeah. Because I'm not about to sit here and argue with you when you don't want to be with me. It's like, it's like being in a relationship. If your wife is saying, Hey, I don't want you no more. You're going to just be trying to force it to go. You go home and she's like, I don't want you no more. You're like, no, no, baby, no, baby, please, baby, baby. And she's just constantly telling you, No, I don't want you. It's going to lead to her doing up shit to you because she's telling you that she don't want to be with you. And I'm sure before they met up, I'm sure that they've had a conversation to say he don't want to be doing this. The energy was in the air for sure. So like, yo, it's too much. That's one thing I like about basketball. Generally, when the basketball players like, I don't want to be on this team no more. They get him to get up out of there. Right. Yeah. Because it's so obviously performance based. That's the weird thing about rap is that or podcasting, same thing. If you're somebody on Nojumper and you move the needle every single time you come on the podcast, the numbers go up and we get a bunch of clips or a bunch of views or whatever. Then it's like, that's what I'm judging you on. That's you scoring 40 points, you know. And then meanwhile, if you come on the podcast and the comment section quickly fills up with people complaining about you or it seems like the clips of you having an opinion on something don't really do good. I'm kind of using that to judge your value. But then meanwhile, in the rap game, it's always like they didn't invest enough in my career. They didn't believe in me. They didn't do this, this and this that would have actually taken my career to the level that it was supposed to get to. I want to tell a secret to everybody that's watching this. I'm going to look at the camera when I say this. I think it's mine right here. Yeah. I can't blow you up. Adam can't blow you up. The people blow you up. What Adam can do is play you on his blog. And if people like it, then it'll blow up. But they can Adam can make those people like you. And this this idea that a label or a production company can make you bigger than what you are. That's not how this works. Nobody's going to invest more money into you so that they can make less money back. You know what I'm saying? If I spend 100, I plan on making I want to make 10 million. That's how this shit goes. When a label give you a million dollars, that's them saying we want we think we can make 20 to 30 million. Right. That's the flip they want to do. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So this idea to think that somebody can just come along and take your music and blow it up. No. When I found that Diego on his channel, it was already moving. He had 10,000 views. I knew people already liked it. So I knew, OK, they like this kid. He a star. I can kind of like craft the talent. Let's get him go to the studio, give him a place to do his thing and then actually pick out the right songs. OK, cool. Oh, Cole Bennett. Man, let's have him shoot the betray video. OK, Cole, make sure my communication with Cole is right to make like not brushing cold. And that's what made me and Cole really get close because doing that process of waiting for him to do that video, I never was on cold like, do this, do that, hurry up. You know, he was like, man, you've been so cool. And it's been like four months. He shot that shit, put it out, gone. But that's because it just was the synergy and the people chose up because at the time, Cole's channel wasn't like crazy huge. You know what I'm saying? Twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. I mean, it was big on like more of an underground level. I had like thirty thirty thousand subscribers at the time. Thirty thousand. I feel he has like twenty million now. I feel like I know. I know. No, no, no, no, I know. No, I know. I just I remember where I was sitting in on the Melrose in twenty seventeen when I first saw the betrayed video and like from our perspective, Lyric, Alemany was already gigantic at that point. Yeah, it was big because Pump had did his thing. It was a bunch of things like but but it was so much simpler than because it was just running gun. Scots. Yeah, it was just running gun videos. Like I would see Cole Bennett shoot a video in an hour to like I seen him shoot a little video. It took probably an hour. We're in a random apartment. It was different. And like he did that shit and it just took off. But the platform, yes, because in that same token, you know, working with Cole, it's been artists that have put videos up there and he called just as big and they didn't blow up. Yeah. It's really about the artist. You know what I'm saying? Like he did a video for Lotto. Yeah. And Lotto ended up being huge. You know what I'm saying? Did a video for Jack Harlow. You know, it's the list go on. First of all, that's why people be like, Oh, I seen so much working with Lyricle. And I've seen like Cole bless so many young artists and gave them that platform so that they can make that money to feed their families. It was it was a remarkable what was going on that period. Like put the video up. Some dude you never heard before. Next thing you know, he's the biggest shit in the world. It was crazy. Like when Juice WRLD came, it was so nuts. Watching nobody know him, Cole take a picture with him. The next thing you know, he's got 10,000 followers on Instagram. He's at 100,000. Then the video comes out. A billion streams and he dropped another one. Then boom, then he's just the biggest shit in the world. Like selling like out stadiums and shit. It was just all those artists like a hundred thought. Literally, I'm excited because I'm just thinking about it. Yeah, I can I can say it was about a hundred artists. A male and female that got deals based off of being on Lyricle lemonade. Yeah, it was insane at that point. It was cold was cooking, though. And I'm just sitting there watching it like, damn. What were you actually doing for Colbena and Lyricle lemonade? Business. And you had a real conversation with Cole where you said, listen, I want to I want to be your manager and I want to get. Do you have a real agreement? Because with managers, it can be kind of weird, right? Did you say I want X percentage of everything or he's told this story. So people have seen this. Oh, OK. Cole Bennett did the video for Lozane. Yes. For Betray. Yeah. When he did that video for Lozane, I only paid Cole like a thousand bucks for the video. OK, that's all he wanted. We went and got a deal at Columbia, a nice deal. I went to Cole and said, yo, I want to give you some money for the video. I think I offered him like a couple hundred thousand first. He was like, no, I'm like one fifty. He kept telling me, no, I'm like a hundred. You're like, no, I'm like, I feel insulted. OK, 60,000. He finally like he thought I was bullshitting. I gave him the money. He took it. He took that money and he invested all that shit. This is where he's a genius. He got his fulfillment center. He got a place like how you got here. Right. In Chicago. In Chicago, he got his whole shit during his merchant audit. And from that, I told him, since you're not going to take this money, I'm going to work with you. I was using the return manager at the time. I'm going to manage you and I don't want any money. I just want to work with you because I'm so happy for what you did. So when it came down to situations and conversations, you know, where you need to have somebody in there, I would step in. I had different relationships to help him. We worked together hand in hand. It was me, him, his mom, Jake, all of us worked together. It was a family atmosphere. You know what I'm saying? I love him to this day and his mother. That's my that's my family. I love them. So I got the opportunity to work with I feel one of the greatest young minds of this era of music because what he was doing with those artists, it was transformative. And I believe there would be a documentary made one day. I believe you'll have a documentary as well about what has went on in Nojumper. That for sure. But I definitely think there will be a documentary made about Lyric Lemonade because that was like, it was his own MTV, on live on YouTube. And he never sold out for the money. And we got offered crazy amounts of money for people to be a part of it. You know what I'm saying? And he never wanted to do it. This round of time when Faze took some money, Cole never wanted to fuck with that. I had everybody come in to offer him big money. But here's the thing. And were you telling him that he should take the money? Absolutely. OK, OK. Because this is my thing. And I haven't talked to Cole in a few years, but I have nothing but respect for him and everything like that. But from my perspective, as the years went by, he kind of lost interest in doing Lyric Lemonade. I'm not saying he lost interest in its entirety. The music festival still goes on. They do the media side of things where they have these freestyles and they do little interviews and stuff like that. But he himself stopped shooting the music videos. Yeah. And it feels like at a certain point, if there was $100 million on the table or even much less, it would have made a lot of sense for him to take it given where it is now. And I'm not saying the brand's dead or anything, but it feels like he should have probably took that at a certain point. This is the thing. OK, so we had a, I would never forget this. And I was very upset. We had a meeting with some very big people. And they offered a lot of money. They flew in on private planes. And I remember Cole was like, I just don't feel comfortable with doing it. And I was driving them back to his Airbnb. Well, I wasn't driving them. Shout out to my driver, man. He was riding back to the Airbnb. And he looked at me. He could tell I was a little kind of salty about taking that money. He said, stat, man, if this don't work out, man, I'll get me a bike. Give me some Birkenstocks. I just live on the beach, man. That's what Cole said? He said, man, don't worry about this, man. You might need that money. They were offering you to live on the beach out here. They all went for it. When he told me that, it just gave me a different perspective. It's not about money. He never really seemed super motivated to become the crazy rich guy. And even now, I don't really know what he's actually doing to make money at this point. I remember he was at Deniz and he told me he purposely, at one time, would keep the lowest amount of money as his bank account. Just so he didn't feel like, just so he could still feel that pressure. Even though he had all the money in the world. But he would do that so he could feel that pressure. He pushed him and drove him to keep going. So he wouldn't get comfortable. And he was never driven by money, man. And so when you say he stopped, he could have rolled that video shit out. He could have took that money. But it's about, he got to be passionate about something. He's always stressed impact. It's all about impact. And you got to respect it because he never sold out nothing. You know, that Lyric Lemonade Festival is one of the only independent festivals. You know the big guys have come in and offered him a bag by now. You know what I'm saying? You know that they've shot out the bird, oh Jake, all the people that work on the festival and him. And they still maintain it and keeping it where they're pretty much independent and paying for everything themselves. You know how expensive it is to have these artists show up. Oh, that's what I think. Every time I look at it, I just think, holy shit. Like that's a lot of big artists on this. They're paying them. They're paying them. They're paying them. I watch him go from, I watched that shit go from just doing a show with Uzi, like one show, two or three day festival. It was absolutely phenomenal. I'm so blessed to have the opportunity to work with him. Duh, I think about it all the time. That at one point that I was working with him and then I, me and that brief stint where I was working with you. That was the shit was awesome for me. And I'm like, I had the pulse of the youth right there. I had no jumper and I'm working with Lirical Lemonade. I didn't even tell him that I was working with you because that would have been a problem. But like, because you know, you're competitors in a sense. Yeah, yeah. Even though we're doing completely different stuff. Completely different things. It was so in the exact same realm. But that was the weird thing about it is that it's like, I'm doing interviews and then meanwhile, I got everybody trying to sign me to a label deal, trying to get me to sign artists. And I never really wanted to sign artists. And then meanwhile, he's doing the music videos and he got everybody on his trying to get them to, I mean, basically like probably do a record label and sign artists and stuff like that. But from my perspective, around that time period of like 2019, 2020, I saw a lot of artists popping up on Lirical Lemonade that seemed like they probably were signed to him. And it didn't feel like any of them really like worked out the way that they were supposed to. And I'm talking about artists that nobody remembers that have videos on there that didn't feel like you ever heard about that artists afterwards. And I don't know. I mean, I feel like Cole kind of just got like, I don't want to say disgruntled, but disillusioned with the music industry in a way. He never liked the music industry. He never liked, and that was kind of like why he never really wanted to be a part of the business. Just thought it was not, he just thought it was slimy. And he has a good reason to feel that way because it's a slimy business. I tell people all the time, you can't drive straight on a crooked road. You know what I'm saying? And that's the music industry. You think you're going to be straight up and down and be in this game. That's not how it works. It goes like this. It's like the content game though. Like people are like, how can, what do you expect them to do? Look what he's dealing with. You know what I'm saying? So, but in a sense, whether you know it or not, you have created a record label type of atmosphere. Because you have these people that come on here, they get notoriety, they express themselves, they have their personalities. You keep them up here. They get mad at you for whatever reason. Next thing you know, they got these microphones and cameras and they're like, man, Adam 22. Yeah, yeah, same thing for sure. That shit is going on all the time. They coming over here, they're trying to fight. That's so crazy. I don't even know how you even deal with that. When I came over here, I'm like, I know for a fact he has had some showdowns. People have come over here with some bullshit. Not really. Really? You're lying. All the shit you be having up here. You're trying to do something to me who came here? Yeah. No, not really. No one's ever tried to do nothing to you? These people talk, I guess, you know what? It comes across, it comes across very convincing when I see it. I mean, it's been a couple of times, I was gonna call you like, damn, you're like, yo. And then I'm like watching you get the boxing thing either. I didn't like that. I rock with you though. So I don't like to see you in situations. And I know you got your, I know how you, I know what you got your bag or whatever. To me, like the whole thing was a big troll. Yeah. You know? And then people mess with you about your situation with your wife. This is one thing that I don't do and I will not do. Like people get on these podcasts and they talk about relationships. When you do that, right? Whatever type of relationship you got, there are other people that are seeing you, right? And you're influencing whatever that relationship is and making that person feel less than, they will probably feel because your shit is different. So like when people start speaking on other people's relationship, it ain't really my, it ain't even my cause. And y'all, and honestly, I remember y'all, you had a party at the house, it was in the hills. Y'all wouldn't marriage it, you and her. Right. And you was telling me that, yo, you know, like I'm gonna marry her. I think she had just had, maybe you had the daughter. Yeah. We got married like right after we had the kid. Yeah. Maybe a year later. So you was having that party and you told me, I said, what did she do? You like, oh, she's in the business. I said, how do you do that? He's like, man, that's just what it is. Well, but at that time, she hadn't worked with other guys yet. So to me, it was nothing at that time. But I didn't know that. You just told me she was in the business. You didn't tell me specifically what was going on. I just knew it was a lot of women up there. And so I was like, yo, damn. And I just, I was like, cool. That's how, that's his relationship. Like it's not my, it's not for me to be talking about what the fuck you doing in your bedroom or whoever. If you want to have her sleep with a thousand Somalis, you know what I'm saying? If she, if she want to sleep with a thousand Somalis and put a million Salamis in her mouth as your husband, if that's what y'all want to do, the fuck I got to do with. And that's my perspective too. What's crazy though is that we're able to harness that feeling that people have of like, oh my God, I could never do that. Because you're not doing it. But meanwhile, like when I see a gay couple, I could never do that either. Right. What goes through my head is like, well, yeah. I guess my word are like really like, sit there and think about a gay couple. I would think like, God, I could never put a dick in my ass. But I don't care at all. And it's easy for me to understand that this gay couple is into shit that I'm not into. And so it's kind of bizarre to me that people have like such a hard time wrapping the head around the idea that a relationship could be open in some way. But we're able to like really capitalize and profit off of the fact that people are so fascinated by that dynamic. But I watched a thing y'all did in an interview with her. And y'all was talking about the finances. Yeah. And how y'all break it down. She pays for this and you pay for this, right? And I'm looking at that shit like, most relationships aren't like this. Yeah. Most men out here, busting their ass, trying to pay for everything. You know what I'm saying? Well, some women out here busting their ass and the man just sitting at home, y'all got a real partnership. So like, what the fuck is everybody up in arms? If that's what they want to do, that's what the fuck they want to do. And for what you said, yo, we had had a million threesomes. She had watched me fuck millions of girls. Yeah. She watched me a bunch of girls this week. And so I'm about to be tripping. Like, man, fuck that. Go get your shit off. But the weird thing about it is that nobody really cared when me and her were doing porn before she started working with other guys. That's when it became really interesting to people. But yo, OK, question. Was there a moment where you stopped working with Cole as closely or is the relationship similar? Or like, what was the point where it kind of became different? We, so he did a album deal with Def Jam. And then we did. What year was that? I think. Oh, the album that came out a couple of years ago, right? That was a whole. This was like the last year of us working together. That kind of like capped off the whole lyrical, 1.0 saga, if you ask me. Because now it feels like he's trying to transition into more of like a media company type thing. Exactly. So I'm not a part of that at all. OK. Because there was a big announcement a couple of months ago that he did like a lyrical, lemonade TV type deal. Yeah. I think Jake has said something to me about that. OK. Jake Milan, who works closely with Cole. Will Jake. Yes. Will Jake shout out to Jake. He's actually not little, which is crazy. He's tall. No, he's tall as fuck. Yeah. But I guess it's like a play on words. But after that album, that was kind of like we did a deal with Pepsi for the beverage. And then we did the album deal. And that was kind of like the end of it. But wait, Pepsi signed the beverage? Because recently I was trying to like find out if the beverage still existed. And I was searching. Yeah, we did a deal with Pepsi. And I found it like listed on like Walmart and Amazon. But then when I tried to actually click it, it said it wasn't in stock. Yeah, we did it with Pepsi. And then I no longer was working on it. So I don't know what actually ended up happening with that or if it's still available. But yeah, that was pretty much it. That was the end. I guess that album coming out with, like you said, that was Lyrical Lemonade 1.0. And this whole new thing that they're doing, which I know is going to be successful because that's just who he is as a person. I have nothing to do with that. But when I was around, like that's when he was with Kenya Barris. And like I was trying. He was talking about doing The Wizard of Oz and all that type of stuff in the movies. Because that's kind of like where I saw him going, which I'm sure that he's doing that now. I think he's doing a documentary on Chief Keefe or something. Yeah, he announced that at one point. With Kenya Barris. OK, yeah, yeah. I introduced him to Kenya Barris. OK. So they continued their relationship clearly after I was in there. So he signed a deal with Pepsi, but then nothing has really happened since then? Or is that? What happened was, I think it was with COVID and all the other stuff, it just wasn't launched correctly. You know, with products and I learned that through this situation, they'll put you in the store. That shit has to move immediately. They don't play like that. So you can go in there. And if it's not moving, they pull you out fast. Yeah, they have insane analytics. Because I asked you about GBT recently. Like if I were to start an energy drink, which for the record, I do not plan on doing, but I was just curious about what the hurdles are for somebody who won't. Why haven't you done that? I mean, when it comes to energy drink, though, you got to be so goddamn big to get that shit off the ground. Even Prime with KSI and Logan Paul behind, it feels like it's kind of struggling. I don't see that shit in 7-Eleven. But, well, it might be struggling now, but. It was huge at first. So look what they already cast out. OK, but like, when it be right. But when it comes to energy drink, 7-Eleven has their own analytics that's basically figuring out how much the store space that they are devoting to your product is worth. But I'm saying for you, just like Cole, right? You have a personal infrastructure where you can offer to sell it without going to the stores. True. You have this space here. We'll talk about it off camera. But you have this space here where you can literally store this shit and you have this is a commercial. Yeah. And you can have it sitting right there. Sitting right like when we shoot the third verse, we have gin and juice sitting right there. That's Dray and Snoop and Jimmy's product. We have it sitting on the table. Gin and juice and it is an alcoholic beverage. Yes, an alcoholic beverage. We have it sitting on the table. You could be doing the same thing with no jumper energy or whatever it is, no jumper cereal. It's just a good name. The thing about energy drinks or drinks in general, though, is that people buy them sort of off the cuff at the store. Like not many people are ordering like a 30 rack of an energy drink to keep in the fridge. That's the same way that we're going live for your members right now that pay $5, $6 a month for your content. They'll pay for that drink. Right. And you make just enough to where you're satisfying them. You're not, you're not, you don't have all that crazy inventory. It's a good business. What are you selling right here? Content? No, Adam. You gotta have a product. You could be selling more. You're right. Like that sweatshirt you got. That shit is dope as f***. This shit is from probably 2018. I just busted out for the first time in so long. What I'm saying? Why we don't got more of those? Yeah. Merch is tough. No, but bro, people, no, Adam, people, Merch is tough because people make too much product. Merch is, bro, like you go back to 2020, you had people like the Nelgboys and Logan Paul and all these dudes just printing money off Merch. That era is way different. If I make 40 shirts, right, and I pay $100 or $400 to make 40 shirts, right? And then I go and sell those shirts for $100 a piece, right? That's $4,000, right? Sure. That's money. That's money. You just made a quick flip. That guy behind that screen over there, that pays a salary. That dude that walked in here, it pays a salary. What did you do? Nothing. They're here to consume anyway. They're watching you. So you have all this content for hours on end and don't have commercials for your own shit. The thing about it, I think, though, is that at this point in time, I feel like if I'm going to, and I would like to do a clothing brand, but I don't know that it needs to be called no jumper. But that's what I'm, whatever it is, I'm just saying. I don't think like Worldstar's Merch was ever really going to be all that successful. The name no jumper, just like Lyrical Lemonade, should be a product. I'm just telling you, I'm not, you know. Now you're right. It should, the fact that you're not selling, no, you got five million subscribers on YouTube. Yeah. Third verse has $6,000. We still got Jenna Juice sitting at that month. But that's relationships. I don't give a, I don't give a what we talking about. Right. Sorry I didn't mean to do it. But all the other podcasts that have $6,000 followers or whatever, might not necessarily get the Snoop and Dre liquor deal. But what I'm saying to you is I'm just saying, I don't care if something was going to be on that table. Yeah. I was going to promote something. Yeah. If it's five people, that's five people I could sell something to. Yeah. People always want to hit the home run. Yeah. Like dog, just get on base. Yeah. You saying, oh, the clothing line is hard. Yeah, it's hard. You trying to be fucking Ralph Lauren. We, you don't need to be Ralph Lauren. Everybody want to be Gatorade. What's wrong with Powerade? I guess like at certain points we've made clothing that's sold disappointingly. Like you made too much. You know who, it's not really, you know, lush one. No. Okay. He's one of the hosts on here. He's a, he's a crazy ass white dude in a Mexican gang. And he had this whole narrative where he had this viral freestyle where he called himself the cocaine bot. And it was super viral with our audience at that time. And I remember we made shirts that was like him as like the terminator with fucking snowflakes. It was a soul like a, like cocaine bot dynamic or whatever. And I think we made a hundred and sold like 18. But I was kind of depressing and I was kind of like, I feel like ever since then we sort of fell back on the merch. Okay. So you look at how many members you have. Yeah. Active that's spending the most money. Uh-huh. How you make merch for them. Yeah. That's true. I should get on it. But, um, okay, wait. So when, when, when your time with Draene M had clearly came to an end. Was that you also being frustrated with music in general? Or did you keep your career going past that point? Okay. So because you put the album out in 2014, but it was a different album. That one, that one. That was, that was some bullshit. Right. So, so when my time came to the end with M, I was depressed. I have no M and Dre. I was depressed. I went through a little something. But then Dre invited me back out to LA to work with him, but as a writer. Got it. And from that, I was writing for everybody that was coming through there and then working with him. Cause we do, when you work with Dre, it's more like a collaborative type of deal. So we're all in there just like putting it together. Right. And then, um, I remember like my rent check had bounced and then I had stopped working with Dre at this time and my rent check bounced. I was like, damn, they had called me at the rent office. I was standing at this place called the Pierrot downtown. And all I had was this Mercedes that Dre had bought me and I sold that Mercedes. And then I paid my rent and then I had, um, it was my homeboy Matthew Schiltz. I'm calling Matt fingers. He had a guy that wanted to get a verse from game. And I'm like, yeah, I call game. I remember when game was practicing for the Drew League. I went over there. I'm like, Hey, yo, you do a verse from my, my homeboy or whatever game said, I, you know, I do it for free for you stat. He did that verse for free. They mad charge to do 30,000 and me and Matt split the money. So from selling my car, I sold my car for like 40 something thousand. And then I got like the 15 from the deal with game doing a verse. And then from that, when I was, uh, when game did that verse, I didn't leave right after me and game always worked on music with Dre. So whoever would come over me and drink game will be writing hooks and everything for them. Me and game just worked well together. You know what I'm saying? And we just had a good flow. So I started working with him like literally like producing and working with game. You know what I'm saying? He's writing crazy shit. I'm helping them put the record together. Um, and we did like a mixtape called OKE. And game split that profit with me 50, 50. Like he put it out through empire and we just had a good working relationship. And this is where I first started this one. I meet whack. Right. So I'm working with game. We did the Jesus piece album. The game at that point wasn't necessarily, I don't think whack was the manager then. I think Tato was, I believe. And my homeboy that worked the Interscope DJ more milli got me a $30,000 check for working for A&R in that project from games budget. You know what I'm saying? DJ is Jimmy I mean nephew. That's what I do. The podcast. You know, okay. So he got me that Jimmy I mean nephew. Yes. Interesting. So yeah. So, so that's how like I'm just telling you literally I went from broke to having a couple of dollars. But were you depressed about the fact that yes, writing is dope being in the music industry in general is dope making money is dope. But for a period of time, you thought that you were going to be a big rap star. Well, of course I felt that way. Yeah. But you know, I'm the type of person that you got to like, you got to pick up your pieces and move and figure it out. You know what I'm saying? You can't just sit there and dwell and, and, um, over. You know, you can't cry over spilled sperm. You know what I'm saying? As I tell people that have babies out of wedlock. So, so, so like that was the whole ship. I was more like what frustrated me the most about rap is how hard I worked on my bars and people just did not give a like how good I was and people just didn't acknowledge how good I was. Right. That frustrated me the most. One of the first times where I felt some jealousy is when I watched Kendrick at the pop out and he performed euphoria and all those people in there knew that complicated as rap by heart. I'm like, these the same people that wouldn't break down my little double and triple on time. Right. This motherfucker is up here saying a parable. This shit is so complex. They know it word for word. I'm like, what in the fuck do I have to do? I mean, I'm far removed from my career. But because that was one of the first times I felt jealous. The era where you came out was kind of like the beginning of the end of the lyrical era in a way like I feel like when 50 came out and even GZ right after him and shit, that was kind of when everybody starts to realize like, oh, rappers aren't going to necessarily be boasting and bragging about being the best rapper anymore. That was kind of like the introduction to that being the new template because I mean, you can go back to like the late nineties. Obviously, somebody like Puffy's not trying to be the best rapper, but like the best rappers of that era or the biggest rappers were largely lyrical rappers, Jay, Nas, M, etc. And then by the time you get to like the early 2000s, mid 2000s, that's starting to sort of fade away. But man, yeah, I really thought I was going to be the biggest rapper in the world and I wanted to be. And it just wasn't in the car for me. But I have, I have been successful at everything that I wanted to do in music. Yeah. As an artist, as a writer, as a manager, as a, having my own production company and label and now doing and getting into the media space. That's why I tell people, I have wanted everything. I knew nothing about the beverage industry. I secure, I helped secure a deal with Cole with Pepsi. You know what I'm saying? I was in talks with Junior Bridgeman before he died to do it with Coca-Cola. We hadn't even sold anything in stores. Right. You know what I mean? I mean, I'm in God, these, those guys that work at that company, it's a billion dollar corporation that they, they in there talking with me. You get what I'm saying? I'm, I've done it all in this shit and one at everything. Right. Every f***ing thing. I'm blessed like a mom. Cause I might, somebody say, yo, you didn't put your album out. I made millions of dollars as a rapper, as that quote, the rapper. Believe it or not, guys, that's I made millions of dollars as a rapper, which is crazy. So when somebody like, yeah, you, you, you weren't successful. That's, I made a million dollars. I ain't never not made a million dollars doing anything. And so now I'm doing the third verse podcast. I'm a winner at that. Adam, I'm a winner. Yeah. If, if I say, yo, Adam, let's do this and do that. Let's do this product. We're going to do it and it's going to work. I, I just know how to win. Yeah. I'm just, I'm just, I'm just saying some people got that s***. No, definitely. I mean, like that's the whole thing is that there's only going to be so many successful or even profitable rappers in any given year. Absolutely. You have to be able to, once it becomes clear to you that this is not going to be the thing that's going to make you a millionaire, you got to be able to pivot out of it. And people, because I don't talk about all the s*** I do and the s*** I've done. I don't brag. I'm not bragging those s***. I don't, I don't do that. You know, I'm low key. Like I don't be doing that s***. I think I went, I think I went through like a little midlife crisis. I bought like a Rolls Royce. I bought all this s***. I think I was just going through some s***. Just be flashy. I mean, even making it to 2026 without having done a real full in-depth interview is pretty rare. It's crazy. You told me 2018 like, no, I don't want to do it. I'm not trying to be out in the public eye like that. Not at all. But now, because I'm doing, I'm, I'm literally publicly talking s*** every goddamn week. So it's like, why would I not sit down with a guy who had my back? So, and I'm, and I'm, I'm going to get my Ray Daniels on and go, because I know all these people. So I'm not doing it right now, but I'm going to go do all, I'm going to run the gambit when it's time. But that's an interesting person you mentioned because Ray, Ray Daniels is somebody who probably like, in terms of just making money, would be smarter to just spend all his time working with artists. But he sees that being a public figure through media has such value that he needs to take a lot of his time and put it into that. This is the thing. Ray's been a star. Right. Yeah. I was working with Rock City, Rock City with my, my ex. That was a cons group, right? Yeah. So, so Tyron, that's who he manages. Tyron and Rock City, prolific writers. Right. Some of the biggest in the music industry. So when people just try to talk about Ray and he ain't doing shit, relax. Yeah. Ray's. If anything, he hasn't done a good enough job letting everyone know everything that he's been involved with because he's been involved with so much over the years. It's like when people talk about ACON, you know, ACON was a star or partners with Jeffree Star and that makeup shit. People don't even know that. It's a lot of, like people talk about me. I've been working with Cole Bennett for the last, how many of a years? Like, are you kidding me? Who had, who dominated the music industry? Behind the scenes is always like so much harder to get recognition for it, but also the recognition, right? But we're not, we're not, it's not about like bragging. So that's the thing. Like going back to Ray, when I say he's a star, I remember I'm in the studio session with him. He come in with one outfit. So they writing for my ex at the time. This dude probably like two hours later, he comes back in a whole another outfit. I was the fuck is you know, he's like, yeah, I got to, I had to update my fresh. This dude is working in the record industry. He's not a personality. This is none of that. This is right before any of that. I'm not a dude of the star. Like, I remember Kenny Burns told me, he's like, when you realize that. Yeah, you can do this music shit, but you will start your personality. You got so much shit to say. You got billion stories about everybody. You've been everywhere and you start doing that. It's over with. And that's what it is. It's about to be over with. I'm just telling you. So some people got it. He got it. I got it. It's a dude named Money Making Matt. He got it. It's a lot of guys, you know what I'm saying? That have that, that, that personality that y'all don't see. But these motherfuckers been, been on a shit from behind the scenes. And I'm, I'm that guy. Like you come to the studio, we gonna crack jokes. I'm gonna embarrass you. I'm everybody gonna be laughing. I'm, I'm do I'm hilarious. It's just, it's just, and it's just only a matter of time. Cause some people are winners as much as they hate you and don't like you. 20, uh, Adam 22, just keep on. No, with his no jumper. Yeah, but my thing is when I look at my life and I have like, you know, a lot more ambition to create big businesses. I think my next successful business, I probably won't be taking credit for it. I'll probably be like funding it, masterminding it. But ultimately it's like, I'll have somebody else be the face of it. Because you've been outside and that goes back to Ray, just like me. The reason why I was so against being in a limelight is because I had performed at stadiums with Eminem and I'm like, damn, you really don't get to do what you want to do. Yeah, it's not fame as a prison when you're him. It sucks. And even for you, when you go somewhere, hey, Adam, that shit sucks. You just trying to be low key. But I just have to think about Eminem and be like, hey, I'm at the party and I took 20 selfies and some guy gave me some weed. He can't go to the party. Yeah, he can't even go to the party. If he goes to the party, he needs to roll with a mob of security and it's just going to be awkward as you can see why he moves the way he lives. One of the most Michael Jordan fame is a prison. One of the most fascinating conversations is talking to Dre about stores. Yeah. Just asking him when the last time he'd been a target. When the last time you've been a rouse. Yeah. When the last time you was on a commercial flight. Oh, yeah. When the last time you was on a bus. Just regular shit that when the last time you just walked down the street by yourself. It's just ancient history to him at this point. They don't do that. I mean, he probably lives in a gay community where he could go for a stroll. Right. Well, it's like on a hill. So you're not going to go stroll on it. But his house itself, you could. It's a stroll. Yeah. You can just he can walk around his house. It's like, and what he did not to put his business out there. He built a replica of the Santa Monica stairs in his backyard. Wow. Yeah, that's what I was saying. I wouldn't know. That's gotta be a hell of a yard. Bruh. It's so crazy. He has, you know, the Santa Monica stairs. Yeah. The exact same shit in the backyard. It's probably like 100. Right next to his big. 200 stairs. The right next to his big ass chicken coop where he has eggs and chickens and all his shit fresh and a garden and all that type of shit. Wow. You know what I'm saying? But that's some real. Charlie Redd. Because I was at the Calabasas stairs a couple of months ago. I seen Kevin Hart coming down and he's with two big ass dudes who are probably either like actually his bodyguards or just functioning as his bodyguards. But even Kevin Hart, you know, he got the hood up and he's like moving like, you know, real fast, like coming away from it and stuff because I mean, Kevin Hart is like famous as fuck. But I feel like if you're a Dre, he really, he's just not that guy. He don't want to be constantly dealing without attention and shit. Every time he would go over there because he loved it. Yeah. You know, it just, he couldn't get through the workout. And then you don't want to be an asshole. Yeah. But you're trying to get your shit off. That's what you have to choose between is just being an asshole or being a man of the people and being a man of the people is great, but you only want to do it. And when it feels right, you know, listen, when I saw that, that shit, that Santa Monica stair shit in his backyard, I was like, it's levels to the shit. Yeah. It's levels to it. I'm just happy that I, that I have the opportunity to get so much knowledge from him. I'm just, I'm so, I mean, I'm just so proud of him. Yeah. Even though like I'm under him, but I'm just proud of him. He make me, man, he drives me to be better every fucking day. Every time, when I'm like, when I'm just feeling down and I want to be inspired, I'll just FaceTime him. I'll call him. I'll go to the house. He's like, man, come over to the house. I just go over there, man. He's just lifting my spirits, man. Just being around. He's just so magnetic. Like I love that guy, man. I love him and I appreciate him so much for being who he is to me. Like he's somebody that's like, that's my, my everything. I, like, I feel like that about whack. That's my guy too. So it's just like, it's just like family, but Dre is just like, man, that's, that's Dr. Dre, man. And that's my boy. You know what I'm saying? It's like, I forget that sometimes because he don't, he don't come off like that. It's not like, yo, I'm Dre. Like he don't do that. Yeah. He just, he just cool. Like it's just my partner. But do you like, all right, from my perspective, my fan take on Dre is that he's, he's almost like too meticulous with the music because you feel like he just, it seems like he just gets trapped with the music to the point where it's not big enough or it's not done. So he ends up kind of like not releasing music for huge amounts of time. How do you argue with success? Yeah. That's like Shadei only put out two or three albums, but she wanted the greatest of all times. Yeah. She only had to do two or three. Lauren Hill did one album pretty and then some unplugged shit. Right. How you argue with the success? Yeah. Whatever he did, it worked. Right. But do you feel like there's something where he could put out more music? But why? Is he that scared of like taking an L, like putting out an album that doesn't perform and it looks bad on his legacy? He's not going to put it out unless he feels right about it. Yeah. And I made this comment on the third verse, like they was talking about Eminem and why they not touring and why Dre not touring. I'm just like, I could tell you exactly why they're not doing it because they don't want to. And I can tell you why Dre is not putting out more music because he doesn't want to. If you want to put out some music, he's going to do it. And he's earned the right through what he has given us to say, I don't want to do that. But does he just work on music every day? And then does what he want to do every day. So if he want to work on music, he does. But from your, from your perspective, is Dre's average day is he work on music for a big chunk of it? He works on music a lot, but if sometimes he don't, sometimes he does. From my perspective, I can tell you this. That man wakes up every day of his life and does exactly what he wants to do every day. And that's the dream. It's not the money at him. Right. It's being able to do what you want to do when you want to do it. Yeah. Dre's life would look a lot different if he was really just trying to money maximize. Yeah. He never chased the money. That's one thing I respected about Cole, because Dre never chased the money. It was the, the, the headphones wasn't about money because he got offered a sneaker deal before that was about, that was a shoe. Che Vicious had put together this whole thing. I forgot what company it was. Beats was supposed to be a tennis shoe. And Jimmy came to the house and saw the proposal. And I think it was like for 30, 40 million dollars, they was offering him. And Dre was like, I don't really know if I want to do this, but it's a lot of money. And, and, and Jimmy was like, man, don't do sneakers, do speakers. That was the quote on the studio wall of no excuses across the street from Interscope because it beats were supposed to be tennis shoes. Right. And they took that Jimmy with his mind, got what will I am. And, you know, and start working with designers and put that shit together. Jimmy's a mastermind and will they, and they put it all together and, and beats became what it became. You know, LeBron helped with wearing them with the Olympic team. And that shit took off massive, dawg. And like, look at that. Yeah. All because he didn't just jump to do stuff. Like he said, yo, I'm not doing that. And, and like, you know, we were saying with like the narratives about artists falling off or whatever. It's like, you know, if there was a narrative that like, oh, you remember when Dre did those wack ass sneakers? I mean, that shit is loud. And that shit kind of when people talk about Dre's career or whatever, they focused on a few bullet points. Oh, this album was crazy big. This album was crazy big. He did the headphone deal. Most people don't really have enough room in their brain to like really remember that much shit, you know? So it's like, you know, like Master Pete. People still like, you really talked to rap fans. They'll talk about how he had some ugly ass sneakers at some point, you know? Sneakers was terrible. Shout out to Peter. He's like one of the most successful music executives, especially like coming from a street back background of all time. Sometimes it's a lot more appetizing to focus in on one thing that didn't work. Or that's if you do reality TV, oh Lord, I mean, that reality TV will get you so much more attention than almost any business deal you're ever going to do, you know, because it's right there live in front of your face. It's meant to entertain you. So it's like you have that choice, though, as a public figure is like, do you want to publicize all of your business dealings? Or do you want to kind of be a little bit more low key about it? You know, it's like that seems very attractive to me as I get older, where every success I've ever had has basically been me putting myself out there in front of the camera. We I signed one porn star that made me millions of dollars. And that was like one of the only times that I did work. It's kind of like pimping. No, but it was that was just literally like, hey, sign this deal. We're going to get 20 percent of your only fans for the next two years. You don't think that's pimping? Pimping, you get money from the clients, like the girl, the money from the clients, whereas like from our perspective, you get paid money for the content of what they're doing with other guys. You know, I love that's pimping. In a way, it is it's similar to. It's the same. It's just the money's coming from a different place. It's all coming from the person. But also like that girl relatively quickly stopped even doing porn. She blew up so big that she just started to just do nude photoshoots and shit like that. Well, that's smart. Yeah. But but she had that luxury because. How do you as a porn star, how do you just flip that and just be like, yo, you know what, I'm in a relationship? Is it like, like tell me the mind because you deal with a lot of these women. I don't know. Yeah. But like, do they have boyfriends and girlfriends and shit? A lot of them do. Or a lot of them are just kind of like, yeah, I'm not dating anybody at this point, like, you know, the girls who are doing five days a week of doing porno, a lot of them are just like, I don't have time or room or interest in dating right now. But then a lot of them just do. They just have a regular thing on the side. You have you clearly get your shit off. You still do. How. So you have only fans and people sign and watch you. Well, for us, we just have a show called Plug Talk where me and my wife interview a different girl every week and then have sex with her on camera. And you can watch the interview on YouTube. How long has this been happening? Four years, five. Wait a minute. Years. Yeah. Oh, you told the way. I know. Maybe we're not getting the word out enough if you don't know about it. I don't. What? They come on. Yeah. And then y'all fuck the girl on camera. Yeah. Everybody sees it. We'd sell it to the world on only fans. Yeah, yeah. You showing your plug talk.com. Yes. You didn't know I do porn. No. Oh, that's fire. Hell yeah. The fuck are you doing? You thought my wife was getting by other guys and not by me. I thought y'all had three that decrib. No, no, no. We do. You a porn star. Yeah. Oh, shit. I should have pounded you up. All right. But you. All right. This is the crazy thing that you're not going to be able to wrap your head around. My wife is at some point and I'm not going to name how long, but she's going to stop doing porn and she's just going to have kids. And I'm going to keep doing porn. So that's going to be a whole. Yeah, we talked about that. That's a whole new chapter in my life that's going to happen at some point. So because she did a part two with the guy, right? Yeah. And then she shot with probably like maybe like eight other dudes over the years. Yeah. Have you did you watch it? I've seen it. Not the whole thing necessarily, but I've seen parts of it. Yeah. You a gangster. You a gangster. Thank you. You are a gangster. I didn't. What kind of marriage is this? Where y'all getting married at? Fucking hell. Pretty close. How the fuck you do that? Where was she made at to allow you just over four year periods is be fucking women in interview? Glendale. Damn, I've been to Glendale a lot. That's where the target is. I've never seen nobody like your wife. She's probably the only one doing this sort of thing. That's crazy. Yeah, unicorn. How did y'all get like, how did this start? Y'all just sitting watching the Simpsons. You like, you know what we should do? Plug talk. Oh, yeah. How did this? Well, we had an offer from a company basically that wanted to like help us do X-rated podcasts, but they just wanted to do shit where like the girls would take the boobs out or whatever. And when me and her talked about it, we were just like, that's stupid as fuck. Like we want to like, we're going to interview a girl. We should fuck her. So we just went in our own direction. Do you ever get tired of fucking? No. Come on, bring it in there. Man, you are a fucking. Every time I do porn, it's like, holy fuck. I feel so lucky to be making money from doing this. You are incredible. Thank you. That's crazy. Incredible diapers. That's, oh yeah, incredible diapers. My boy. I'm wearing one right now. No, you're not wearing a diaper. No, I'm just kidding. But yes. That's fucking nuts. Adam, I had no clue when I was coming over here. I'm sitting next to the porn star. This motherfucker Adam already. You can go to the store and buy Adam 22 flashlight. Flashlight. Flashlight. What's a flashlight? Well, for women, it's a mold or your vagina. For me, it's a mold of my penis. You have a mold of your dick in the store. You can go online right now and buy it. I don't even know who my friends are. I don't even know you, dawg. They know. They're all like, holy shit. Stad doesn't know this. You know you weren't doing porn back when I was fucking. You didn't do that. I was doing like OnlyFans with my girl. But I wasn't like. Back in 2018. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I wasn't like. OnlyFans was around? Yeah. Damn, you've been so. Are them girls really making that amount of money on there? Like that? My girl is. And some girls are, but not all of them. Does she just you have a foot page? No. Okay, I got a homeboy that love feet. You probably like buy a custom foot video on her OnlyFans. I'm pretty sure that is crazy. Yeah. How many women so every week y'all have a different girl? Oh, yeah, basically. Any repeats? Yeah. Damn, so how do you how do you get you take submissions? Like what happens? Yeah, people DM me. We throw them on the spreadsheet, you know. So women just DM you and say, Hey, I want to fuck you and your wife. Yeah. And then I submit that link to the girls profile to the plug talk group chat and then we decide if we're going to do it or not. I am a lot less picky than my wife is. You are stealing money. You're stealing it. No, we've built an enterprise. No, I'm saying, but this is someone's dream somewhere. Yeah, this is someone's dream. What do you do today at work? Well, I'm going in and my wife is going to this girl and we're going to talk to her first. And then we're going to. But this is the weird thing is that when my wife retires, like I did two scenes with us, like two plug talk episodes the other day. And I had this other girl, the super hot poppin porno star named Alana. She was like the fill in for Lana. So this is like my my make believe wife for the day because we're interviewing girls together because your wife didn't do it that day. She just didn't. She was just busy that day. Like she had a shit going on. So it's like, but it's also kind of like in the lead up to the fact that in the future, she'll probably be retired having personal questions. Yeah, don't get offended. Sure. Do y'all still like outside of it? Yeah. So y'all. So that's business. And then y'all. So is the business different than the home? Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. What's the difference? Not to get you a bit. I mean, we got we're going here. I'm sorry. I mean, the camera's not here at them. We remember when the camera's on the positions that you do are the positions that look good for the camera. And when you're f**king at home, like even OK, give me a position that look good. Most basic sex position is the girl's laying on her back. You're on top of her. You're doing missionary. Important. That doesn't exist. Wow. Because you're covering her whole body with your body. Yes. So we do missionary, but you're fully like leaned back. So the camera can see her whole body as well as your penis going in and out of her. Like shit like that. So from the back, y'all got to go side. They feel from the side so she can so they can see the going in. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, stuff like that. There's like or even just who are you, bro? You know, where do you come? Does WAC know you do this? I'm going to be real with you. This might destroy some people's fantasies is that I'm not giving my wife facials at home at 9 p.m. Before we go to bed. Well, you're not blessing in her face at the crib. I know. But I'm saying like, you know, people who watch porn probably think that's what everybody does. People that lust after your wife. Yeah, a lot of them. Yeah, that's crazy. But I guess that's what it is because it's some women that lost after you. Yeah, I'm less familiar with them. But I'm aware that they're probably out there. They want to. It's not like y'all running out of applicants to the porn girls. I mean, they're pretty impressed by me. I would say it's safe to say because it's so out there to be a guy who's like famous, quote unquote, and is still open to his wife, other guys as well as actually doing the porn. Like you can't really think of anybody else who's like a public figure who would do that. So a lot of times when we interview girls, there's just a moment where they'll be like, man, I want to have a relationship like you guys. Has it too over with like different sponsors and getting money outside of like corporate wise? Almost certainly. But there's probably other things that will stop that as well. So, yeah. Damn, that. Hey, man, listen, I admire that. I appreciate it. I admire it. Well, OK, my last question is tell me about starting this podcast because the name, the third verse is kind of interesting because that is a common hip hop experience. You go back to listen to an old Jay-Z song. And at some point you realize like, oh, my God, this guy really went in three times. Like that's insane. Nobody does that anymore. Well, it's a lost art in music. So the podcast is a lost perspective. Right. That that that we speak from because the the way we did business, a lot of people don't do business like that. So our perspective and the way we see things is still relevant now. Yeah. But a lot of people don't do it. So it's just that perspective on things like, for instance, being vulnerable as a writer and knowing that you have contributed to some negatives that have happened in hip hop. No one's saying that. OK, talking about, you know what? I don't know if I want to do that business deal or saying, you know what? There's no such thing as independent. When people say, oh, I'm independent. There's no such thing as independent in music because the one when you drop a song, where are you putting it? Yeah. iTunes, Apple, Spotify, they taking a percentage, right? That's a company just like Universal is. If you are my podcast independent, I ain't with no company. Where are you putting it? What's YouTube? Right. Where are you? Where are you on? So that that point of view, that perspective or saying, you know what, that's their relationship. It's none of my business. Not that perspective is not out there like that. It should be, but it's not. So it's like the third verse. It's not out there either. Yeah. So that's where that's where it stems from. That's dope. Yeah. And and how close are you with Justin, the company man? Like, was he just the obvious person for you to start this way? So it was actually old girl that was with a Nadesca. It was originally going to be me, Nadesca and DJ. But Nadesca live out here? No, she lives in New York. But originally it was going to be us three, but then she got pregnant. Really? I didn't know that. And so then what happened was Justin, he would always just call me and ask me questions about what was going on and stuff in hip hop. We ended up having debates on the phone. And me and DJ have been spent friends for over 20 years and we work together managing producers and artists or whatever. And so it was I'm like, yo, you know what, we should have Justin because I feel like with me and DJ, it'll be too silly. You got to have like a real person. Like you have made yourself into a journalist, whether you know it or not. When you speak, you sound professional and it's just like Justin. He's like, I'm the company man. Like, well, would you say that he's like the more academic side of things and you're a little bit more flavorful? Oh, absolutely. I'm in there cutting up acting silly. I didn't do it with you today, but like that's the shit I'm on. I'm acting silly. I'm talking all kind of shit. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, I'm the animated one. DJ is very animated, but he's just he's got to get more comfortable. OK. But yeah, man, it's really dope, dog. It's the beginning. I appreciate you for you even reaching out and having me up here. No, for sure. I love you. I want to do this forever. So when I actually started like watching clips from your podcast, I was like, if he's doing this for sure, I got to be able to do an interview. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a lot of other podcasts that are like on your level that have asked me to come on. But I I told WACC, I'm like, yo, I have to do no jumper first because of you. And I didn't know you was a porn star. I didn't know I was sitting here with the new Dirk Diggler. Shit, a while at 22. It's crazy. Yeah, you don't find like a lot of other people who are like successful in one thing. And then I like, you know what? I'm going to start doing porn, too. I'm going to keep doing the other thing. I'm going to start doing porn, too. Boxing, porn. Dog, you use the first boxing, porn executive I've ever met. The boxing chapter of my life was short lived. Are you crazy? Why did you do that? Just for fun, for a little bit of money. It's cool. But like you knew you wasn't going to win. This guy's big. Yeah, I mean, I did my best. I felt so I felt so bad. You don't feel bad. I didn't even feel bad. I felt bad. I was mad. I wanted you to I wanted you to win. The only person in the Airbnb after I lost that was upset was my boxing trainer. Oh, yeah, you embarrassed him. I think he had the win. You didn't even throw the punches though. Don't what were you doing? That's my one thing I regret. What a snuck of punch in there. But I am very thankful. I'm thankful I didn't get like laid out. You fight better than that in real life. Probably. I know you do. What the fuck are you talking about? I've been fighting people smaller than myself my whole life. But I'm saying, but you when I was. But that's not that wasn't a good. They ain't just like when people see that like them, Adam can't fight at all. I know for a fact you fight better for sure better than that. I wanted to fight somebody. No, you don't think so? No. Hello, Faizies over here even. Really? Yeah. Wacken fight, man. I want to say this, man. I know a lot of y'all don't like wack, man. Stal him out, man. He a really good dude. He solid. You know what I'm saying? Like good man. Good man. You know, so I see a lot of the stuff going on. It's a lot of good guys that come up here. All y'all, I support everybody, man. We're a Crip Mac. I love Crip Mac. Love Crip Mac. Blueface. All the different guys, the characters you made up here, Unk, all these guys you turn. You know, we love Big U. I know him and Wack got their thing. We love the Crips, the Bloods. We love the Vice Lords, the everything. We love every. I want to thank Los Angeles. Los Angeles as a whole for ingratiating me. And allowing me to work in his business and do my thing out here. I also want to say Adam really does love San Diego. He thinks there are a lot of great artists in San Diego. He didn't mean to say that about y'all San Diego. I didn't mean it. I'm doubling down. And really, I want to see San Diego step it up in the new year. No, he loves San Diego. He's going to get a house there. Him and Lena are going to retire. He's going to still be having only fans on the beach, but he's going to be doing his thing. So San Diego, Stal my man out. The old argument that San Diego got into with Nojumper was because people were basically asking like San Diego was soft and his pussy, et cetera. Definitely not so. Right. But I remember when they got offended by that a few years back. And then me saying that it's basically not a music city. Or that he slick came out of there for sure. But you're naming one rapper from 20 years ago. I'm just saying, it's like, you know, a lot of people, you know, I actually, I don't even understand how anyone from San Diego can take themselves seriously by getting offended by that because it's like, Brett, if you ask the AI, name the top 10 rappers out of San Diego, it is not a good situation. Rob Knox, he was out of Rob Stone. But then if you asked like, who are the top 10 rappers out of Northern California or out of the Bay or out of LA or out of, you know, San Diego or else they want to be considered in that. I think it's your delivery. Yeah, I just say how it is. It was your. No, you got it. Up north got mad because I said that the Northern California is less evolved than Southern California. They really weren't feeling that. I haven't spent enough time there, but they got San Francisco. It's beautiful, Oakland. But all I remember I have always like the music industry and the empire. Right. But I mean, we got like every label. Well, so you saying that less corporate. There's just if you want to be a successful rapper, there's just like way more shit going on down here. And hey, there ain't shit going on down here either. Like California's Southern California is cold in general. Hip hop is cold in general. Let's end with that. What's your thoughts on the state of hip hop in general? Because it feels like pretty fucked up from a lot of people's perspective. It's the it's the it's because the youth don't want to rap anymore. The youth want to stream. They want to be YouTubers. If you go in high school and middle school, you asked them what they want to be. They want to be YouTubers. Yeah. And so now they're getting cameras like these and setting up in their room, playing a video game and where they would be rapping or making music. They're reacting. It's a young kid. His name is Slayer or whatever. He's dope. Yeah. Listen to he. Yeah, he's dope as. But other than that, I can't really name none of the guys. That's really crazy. That impressed me. That's that's like night because I was just saying we don't have young superstars. Yeah. Where's the 19 and 20 rows that are like dope? Somebody said to me, you didn't talk about Nas and Jay-Z battle like this. We was talking about all the other MCs that was going on while you focusing on Drake and Kendrick. Well, yeah, we was talking about Nas and Jay, but we also had all these other artists that were taking over the world at the time. So we didn't have to focus all our attention on it. Now Kendrick and Drake are 40 years old, bro. They're not kids. Right. And all the other artists like Tyler, 35, 30, these guys aren't kids. Where's the 19 and 20 year old rappers that are going to carry the baton? Let me tell you, they don't exist. They're streaming and being YouTubers. Do you remember like I was thinking about this the other day is that when I was in high school and my whole life really up until maybe like the last five years or whatever, everybody wanted to be a rapper. Like even the people who had no business being a rapper, there was multiple kids in my high school in White Ass, New Hampshire who wanted to be rappers that obviously had no chance. They were never going to be a rapper. Nobody was ever going to listen to a rap. They want to be rappers because there was like almost no other like cool artistic pursuits that they could really even think of themselves going into. And now you've like really gotten to the point where even people who probably have the capacity to be a successful rapper don't necessarily see being a rapper as being the thing that they want to go into. Like if you have that charisma and personality and stuff, you might want to be a streamer or a YouTuber or whatever you know. And then you see and another thing that's that's tricky because you see people see people like you, Joe Budden, all these Charlemagne, all these different people or you see Casinet and they making so much money and you get this this thing in your mind. Oh, I'm just going to pick up a camera and do it. I'm going to make money that fast. Yeah. And once you get into it, you realize that, oh, this is a grind. I've seen a lot of rappers like fail miserably at streaming. And but that's the thing about streaming is that people don't even really notice because it's hard to get noticed as a streamer, even if you're very popular as a rapper. I want to ask you another question. Sure. Why you with sauce? Walk. What's the beef with sauce? I think him and Drake might have patched it up. So I don't know if I should even be going in on sauce walking anymore, because that was at least part of our because you didn't like him messing with Drake. I would say that you kind of went low, but low to build. Yeah, I watched you. No, he wanted to be with me. I don't think it was a wise idea on his part, because I just started calling attention to various things that were not consistent with him. But is he not entertaining? Oh, I think I'm devoted to not pushing this feud further until he makes it clear to me that he wants to keep you guys would make great content together. I agree. We have hung out with him over the years, but we never actually did any content together. You guys will make great content and it's good. The back and forth is actually good for what you do. And I think I hope y'all make it up and it doesn't go beyond of anything. That's the only thing that I don't like when it starts getting like violent and y'all people want to hurt somebody and people. Man, we got to learn how to disagree without the bullshit. I agree. Sauce Walker stopped killing people, man. No, he's not. He dropping bags on people's heads, man. No, I don't do that. Allegedly. That's not. That's a legend. Yeah, don't do that. OK. So when you when you do you wear that when you are performing on only van, your wedding ring? I do. Yeah. That is phenomenal. But I do take I tell the girls pro tip. Tell the girls to take their rings off before you start fucking because I've had my fuck shredded by some rings before. And it doesn't ring in the ring. No, I'm talking about like rings on their fingers, because sometimes the girls will start drinking up real aggressive. And the rings are like cheese, greater if they hit you from the right angle. Yo. I can't even believe that you know I'm poor. Where have I been? I just I be I be working trying to get some. Yeah, you're in your own world. Yeah, I don't I'm not a porn guy either. Oh, really? No. I guess she is that she stopped a long time ago. Like you got to sit around just getting off at the crib. When you realize you just when you realize I remember I went to Toronto. To Jerkoff. And they was they had porn on the regular television. That was amazing when you were younger. Oh my God, listen, no, that put you in my business. But I might have bus like 14 nuts. In how long? It just I just stayed in my room. Just jacking true gooner status. Yeah, man, it was I'm really into the girl on girl when I was in the. I can't do that. I love the squirt because I got the imagination. I put my dick in there. Ah, OK, so I'm just seeing them. We probably love VR porn. Oh, oh, oh, yeah. But then you can you see that I don't want to see no. It's only my can beat it. No, OK, so I have a friend who he was like basically in this like big mansion or whatever, and he puts on the VR headset and he starts doing it. He starts getting super into it. And somebody walks somebody walks by the room and they see him wearing the VR headset, just going. That is in the virtual porn thing. I haven't done it. Yes, I don't really know how tantalizing that would be. I feel like I might he don't feel anything. No, but like I think sensory wise, like the headset's kind of shaken. And I don't know what is my head doing? Maybe it's hornier than me, but that's some real horn shit. Yeah, I got like like I haven't watched a porn in so long. But like you when I will watch him, it's like I'm literally putting myself in a moment. I feel like I should watch more porn because I don't watch enough of it, given that I'm in the business. Why? I just don't care. Are you trying to get like more like skills? Just to know what other companies are doing, what girls are good performers. Do you do are you doing the same shit? Are you like switching it up? There's only so many moves. And are you and are you being directed? Like who's in the room? I'm pretty much directing it. So you're doing you're filming it and. No, we have a film. OK, I've been to say you like Shohei Otani. And that's that's yeah, I don't want to pitch in and catch it. No, no, no, no. I ain't catching. Oh, so so so this is a big thing going on in your industry. I've never done this by her. Ocho single talking about. So are you are you getting pegged? No. Have you been pegged? No, I learned about. I just learned about this, that men are actually letting their women pegged them. Some some guys like it. I'm not into that. No, I mean, that's not my style. But man, shout out to you, man. So that's all the guys getting pegged out there. That's crazy. Yeah. I think if you're getting pegged, you might as well just go ahead and commit to being a homosexual. Maybe you like women, but then you also like having something in your butt. No, it's a. But I know dudes who I'm very confident they're 100 percent straight and they like getting their girl to finger their ass or stick a. Dildo in there or whatever it is. A finger is two different things. I never had a finger in my eyes, but when it starts something that resembles a penis, you might as well just go on and get the real thing. Well, this resembles a relatively small penis. I only know my. It's bigger than that. I mean, no disrespect. But my my looks nothing like my fingers. Hmm. But you put a bunch of fingers together and my shit. You get that's not how my they know how your like the claws. The claws or like grabbing. I still have never fisted. That's something I should do if I want to be a real porn star. Can I tell you something? You know, I know you got somebody else coming. I got a piece of that, too. But let's hear this. This girl, I was on tour. She worked at Hooters. Yeah, I forgot her name. I remember I put one finger in her ass. Second, three, four. Put my whole hand in her ass. Took my hand like this. I'm doing this to her shit. Ha, ha, ha. Yo, that girl would not go to sleep. I am not going to say what tour I was on, but the security. These guys were six, eight, six, nine niggas. Just huge motherfuckers. I sent her to them. OK. They devoured her. When I came, when I came, like we would eat breakfast in the morning. When I came down, these guys like lifted me up like I had just won the Super Bowl. Wow. They were like, and she was a dainty little petite white girl. Yeah. And they were like, man, thank you so much, man. She was an animal. And I had knocked her like two, three times. She would not. That's the first like woman that I ever seen that was addicted to sex. And she came to me afterwards. She called me in LA and she just ran. She's like, I want to come in and let all your friends. That's the first time I experienced someone with a real sexual. You meet a girl like that and you're like, how are you not doing porn? Yeah, she she had a real sexual addiction. Yeah. So yeah. Some of the porn girls I know are like kind of like that. They have like that level of interest in sex. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. But that is insane. Holy shit. Didn't you guys did you come on and a daughter together on tour or did they just make out? I forget what happened was they were kissing and tongueing each other. Right. They was mom and daughter and said allegedly. It was some things going on with them. Those and took them down together. That was allegedly the thing we don't know. We don't know what happened. We're not going to say that. Go Diego. But they were mother and daughter. Yeah, that's and it was crazy. I think it was in Kansas. That is that helps explain it. But that is just so mind blowing that that exists at all. You got it. You got to love the Caucasian women, the dedication. Yeah, we got to own that black women doing that. That's crazy to a mom and a daughter. That's it. I put it on Instagram. You've seen it. That's how you know. Now, I remember like talking to those in about it before he's someone who blew up and just so much of his attention went into getting. Can I tell you the dopest name that he said? Sure. I love you. One day. I bought them all these condoms. I'm like, you got to wear these condoms. You can't just be out here. He says that I want to the girl, not the condom. He's like, I want to put my I want to be in the girl. I don't want to be in the condom. If I'm in the condom, I'm not in the girl. That guy was a genius. You know, it's I have so much shit stored up in my head because I would always be hooking up the rappers with the porn stars. Yes. And then like, I'm actually friends with the porn stars. So it's not like I'd be asking them for the trip report, but they would just tell me like, oh, I saw one. So and he was doing this, this and this, and it'll be some weird as shit. And I still have some of that like lingering around in my head. But you're a good man for not telling people's business, but you got a lot of shit that you can say. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be weird. One time. Oh, yeah. It happens. I'm not going to let it all out. Yo, stat, thank you so much, man. We should definitely do this again sometime. Absolutely. I know. What whack. We were talking about doing a whole episode with the third verse podcast. That would be insane. We're going to do that. Let's do that. It was so many whack stories that we could tell so many things. Well, once we start getting into whack stories, he'll usually tell you some more stories about them. So we got to definitely schedule some hours for that. I have some real stories with whack. I bet. Yeah, some real ones. That time when he shaved his eyebrows because he had gunpowder on there at the studio because he had. We didn't get all that. What? You know, when you when you when you let a fire on him, you got to shave your face. You do? If you want to get away with it? Yeah. He had he had to shave his eyebrows. You can't just wash your face. Now, you got all that shit on. What? I'm like, yeah. Yeah. So when people be like, he's not. So many questions. So I was a stat quote. Thank you so much for the interview. Everybody, if you want to go watch some good high quality podcast and go check out the third verse podcast on YouTube. Yes, please like, add, hype and subscribe. Yeah. And follow us on all the socials and make sure you check out Coach United on YouTube as well, man. We appreciate y'all much love and thank you. This everybody here for supporting this guy. This is a good man, like in real life. Appreciate that. Real, real, real life, a good man. It's always been good to me. We've been good to each other and super solid. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, stat quo legend in the building. No jumper coolest podcast in the world. Make sure you like, comment and subscribe. Check us out on Instagram, TikTok, etc. And shout out to our members. And don't forget the hype. The hype. I'm new to the hype. I don't even really know about the hype yet. Hipe subscribe. The hype is important.