Name another podcast like this. We're gonna bring it to the table all the time. Check it, check it, check it. This is Unique House. This is your boy, E-C-E-O, and I'm here with the lovely, amazing official, Miss Jamaica. What's going on? None of my damn. Man, hey man, hey man, say man. We got a special guest in here today, man. This guy right here, man. You know, entrepreneur, man. This boy right here, man. Hey man, every time I seen him, he was getting to it. That made me know I had to get mine together, man. My guy, Radio Raheem, is in the building. What's going on, baby? What's going down, what's going down, man. Definitely a pleasure, definitely a pleasure. You know what I'm saying? Love the set up, it's my castle.   Like, hey man, I'd love to see you, man. Like when I would see you in the airport or wherever I would see you, it was always grinding, man. And then you always had something to offer. So that's a good thing, you know? Absolutely, man. You know what I'm saying? You've been doing your thing for a good couple decades. Man, thank God for it, right? Yeah, nah, that's beautiful. Man, that's beautiful.  No matter what, they gonna know they done cross paths. You know what I mean? Like, I seen him, you know? I might not be stepping the way you stepping, but we stepping and we making moves. We been stepping in the same direction, you know what I'm saying? We getting to the payola, that's the ultimate goal. That's the one thing we been doing. Yes, sir. So I know you have to go with it, here she goes. I wanna know about Radio Rahim before you were Radio Rahim. Before I was Radio Rahim. Tell me as far back as you can remember, growing up, mom and dad, siblings, the whole works. All right, well, I was born in Japan. So my mom is Japanese, my dad's black, and we moved to America when I was like six or seven. Do you remember anything about Japan? Yeah, I definitely do.  It was beautiful, the scenery was beautiful, the people was always nice to me. Can you speak Japanese? Speak a little bit, not too much, you know?  But how was it being raised in a multicultural home? I mean, it was definitely different. You know, I always felt kind of out of place, you know what I'm saying?  So it was different, it was different, you know? And then like, when I first came to America, it was like I was in the hood, then I was in the country, then I was back in the hood. And then it was like, the country life was, was like chasing farms and chickens and running around, catching animals and stuff. The hood life was like dodging bullets, not knowing when I'm gonna get robbed, walking down the street, you know? So it was like a little bit of both worlds. But it made you the person that you are today? It did, it did. A weird motherfucker. Who was hard on your mom or dad? Dad. I don't think really neither, you know what I'm saying? It was kind of like, they just let me run wild for a while, you know? You an only child? I am the only child. That's why I write to the niggas' ball. The niggas' ball, bro. That niggas' ball, I just see it right there. The niggas' ball, man. No, no, no, everybody ain't got elephants, niggas. So don't try to play me. You don't talk about, like. The elephants didn't come with the spoils. They came from the hustle, you know what I'm saying? Definitely had to hustle to buy me some eggs. Tell me something that your dad instilled in you as a young child. Well, I wouldn't really say it's like a dad because I didn't have my dad growing up. You know, it was like more like, she had different dudes. Okay. I didn't really learn nothing from the different dudes she had, you know? But I definitely learned things from like the OGs and Streets and they like really installed, like, you know, you just gotta protect your home, protect your castle, you know, and just make sure that your family's good. So I always made sure I did that. But you knew your dad, right? No, I didn't find out about him until I was like 13. Really? How did that go? I mean, it was like, it was like, you know, trying to find out that she was adopted and all of a sudden like, hold on, wait a minute, you my mom, I don't know what else y'all done lied about all these dudes. So you met him at 13 for the first time?  We don't look the same. But mom said that's what it was. Yeah, she said that's what it was. So I had to take her word for it. I tried to look through some birth certificates and I didn't see no names on there. So I was like, I don't know what's going on. So did you hold a chip on your shoulder?  That's exactly what I was doing. It definitely turned me up. It definitely put me on the wrong side of the railroad tracks.  Yeah, yeah. It's gangster life from now on. No, no, I get it, I get it. Cause I was, I've been there, man. Once you, even the divorce thing, my parents divorced at nine. So it kind of hit you the same way when you split the house up.  You know what I'm saying? Everything seemed like it come crumbling down when you started seeing those rough patches and hitting those potholes in life. You know what I'm saying? Nothing else matters after that, you know?  You can't believe what nobody say after that.  I know you had to be coming up like you did. I mean, I don't know. It was really like no love at the house, you know? Really? I never told them she loved me. That's the way it be though, man. Cause somebody, her parents probably never told them. They loved her. But also the culture has something probably to do with it as well too. Asian culture, it's different, it's really hard. It's different. It ain't really hard. Especially on boys. Yeah. So, but how do you think that, did that, did you do what it's supposed to do? Did it work, nigga? I mean, it definitely made me ruthless. Okay then. You know what I'm saying?  I didn't really know how to love her. I didn't really know how to love her. I didn't really know how to tell her I loved her because it felt weird. Yeah. And did you break through? Yeah. That's the dope part. Somewhere. Somewhere. We working on it. We working on it. We're working progress. Nah, that's good, man. And this is how I go down on Boss Talk 101. We come through like that. Straight to it. Well, no, we definitely want to know. I think the big thing about us is that other people will hear your story and they can feel the energy and it helps the people to come through different situations. Like my daddy never told me he loved me, he didn't hug me either, nigga, you ain't by yourself. But your mama did? Yeah, my mama, she really was mean because I was selling dope.  You know what I'm saying? My mom had to bail me out of jail a couple of times, you know? She found drugs under my bed, drugs under my bed. Yeah, that's how I go down when you're really your go-getter. See, we got the same kind of issues, you know what I'm saying? Like when you come up from a place where you come from nothing, like I was trying, you know, I came up in the crack era. So, you know, like, it's like, I was like, damn, they out here didn't even, it was easy.  It felt like, damn, like I was a superhero in the hood.  When you walk to the corner store, you getting candy and crack at the same time. Yeah, everything. Whatever you want, right there. So, really like when you think about just coming up and making it out, did you see a lot of people, you know, you lose their life and stuff to happen in the hood? All the time. I mean, shoot, I saw two of my close friends murdered in front of me. See what I'm saying? Yeah. And how did that affect you?  Yeah? Yeah. But it didn't make you get out of that lifestyle? Nah, it didn't. It just made me feel like I just gotta be more protected and really watch my surroundings a lot more because we kinda like walked into a situation, you know, when it was bad. Yeah. You get used to it. I hate to say it. You really do.  Shit that you should never really be immune to, you be immune to it. Y'all, that's a dead body, all right? Oh, that's nigga laying on the ground. Like he laying on the ground, I'm about to go. You just leave him there. I done been there, nigga. Like I gotta go, nigga, I got to go.  I don't know if I told it on here before, and stabbing it in the head with a screwdriver. And yeah, yeah, it happens. Like you can go down just like that. And you right there in the midst of it. What you gonna do? Drive. No, we just, the fight had just took off, really. You know, but I'm just saying, but you hear about stuff the next day and you be like, damn, you know, you know it was something that you was kinda close to. Or you think it could have been you? Or it could have been you. I done been at different clubs where, and I know I told this story I was at the club and I was trying to pull my Cadillac in the front, because nigga ain't Big Mike over at Bobby's. He always just punk everybody. He had the gun on him, everything. Nigga move the car, nigga, get out the way. He trying to get me in there. You know, I'm running things.   Yeah, I remember that night. My nigga Mike, man, RIP the Big Mike. I don't understand Dallas used to be the Wild Wild West. Like it wasn't really no safe town like the way it is now. Like it was really dangerous. At every side on each side of Dallas it was dangerous. That's cause most of the time they pointed gun and they beefing on Instagram and YouTube and they not really beefing in the streets like that. They hard on IG, hard on Instagram. These niggas hard, they point the gun, nigga, I come get you. Nigga don't make me come get you. Yeah. So I wanna know how old were you when and what happened to make you turn like your hustle into a legal hustle? Got arrested and I went to the military. And then I was in the Navy. So when I got into the military kind of straightened me out and really gave me the discipline I always needed cause I never got it at home. And it just kind of showed me like a better way. Why did you go to the Navy? Did somebody try to get you in there? Or you just say, you know what, I'm gonna go.  And I was like, let me just go with the... Thank you, Slick. Ray there, you thank you, Slick. You really trying to tell us the Antoine Fischer story, nigga, don't try to play me, nigga. That's what it said like when I watched it, I was like, damn, is that me?  But I'm gonna get in, well, I don't know. I just mess with you. I relate a lot to that movie. I bet you did, man. Except for me wasn't a mother, it was the father for him. Yeah, well, I had my cousin, when he watched the baby boy, it hit him a certain way.   I'm like, man, this nigga did the same thing. You seen it in there, didn't you? I was getting in trouble. I was going to mass all the time.  How long did you stay in there? Three years, three years. That's dope. You stayed a good while. I stuck it in there for a little while. Went to war, you know? You did. Yeah, they sent me off to war. You both be getting a check now. Yeah, nigga. Crazy thing is, I end up on the military mode. You damn. How is that possible? They gave me a bonus and it was like, since you didn't complete the whole thing, you gotta pay us back that bonus. You both play crazy right then. You don't get it. Yeah. You're supposed to be like, I don't remember nothing. I did, there's a gun smoke over there. I hit it. The government want their money. They gonna get it one way or another.    You a go-getter.  I don't know how many I got left, but I'm running on a fee right now. I'm running through a bunch of them. So restaurant, I'm hearing that you got a restaurant about to open, or did you have a soft opening? We just did the soft opening this weekend. It was dope. Everybody came through, show love, and we're getting ready for the grand opening on the 26th. What's the name of it? Bistro 808. Bistro 808. Kind of why a restaurant. Well, in the military, I was a cook. Oh. So I was like, you know, when I get out the military, I'ma own a restaurant, but I end up owning a studio first and did the studio for like a good 12 years. And then around this time, I just found the good opportunity to get on a restaurant and I made it happen. Yeah. And all the 12 years, you would always cook and everybody was like, your food is amazing. No, I actually told myself I'm never gonna touch a pot in a pan again when I got out in the military, cause I was traumatized. Cause I was like, yo, these motherfuckers had me cooking for 600 people. All the time. These two cooks. And I don't even know how that's even physically possible, but we had these big bowls and this big spoon and we had to like stir it up like a witch trying to cook for everybody.  I got war wounds. I got burn marks. My finger done got cut open. Just messing with that cooking. Yeah. And then you cooking on a boat. So things are swinging and flying. You got nice flying. Did you get sea swag? You get your sea legs like after the first week, you know, you just gotta start, even things out. But you definitely rocking and rolling all the time. So what are we cooking at this restaurant? It's international cuisine. Jamaican food? We do got like a little spin to it. The head chef there is a chef from the Caribbean. So he's from the Virgin Islands. So he brought a lot of his dishes down.  So we'll have like special things like lobsters and waffles. We'll have certain things like catfish and waffles. You know, but then we'll add like our own special flavor on top of it that you ain't never had before. And the sauces is what gets you. Well, I'll be, I'm definitely gonna, we gonna be over there. Wasn't it at the 20 what? The 20. I should have been at the soft open. Now I didn't know. We didn't know about it. Oh, but no. Oh, but I'll be there. We locked in. Yeah. I'll be there. And you have an Instagram and all of social media already? Yeah. It's a Beast Show 808 Dallas. So you just lock that in. That way you can see everything that we doing. Make sure y'all follow that. Check that out. That's dope. I love ads. Cause let me tell you, I love to see those ads, especially when they have the beautiful picture of the food and you're just like, that looks so good. I make my notes. Okay. I need to go see that restaurant. I need to go see that restaurant because the pictures is what make you. I need to figure out how they get those ads, Pop Dog. Cause as soon as you think of something, it just pops up. That's the weirdest thing in your house, my neighbor. This is in your house, man. Baby, listen to this. I think they in my brain. This is in your house, man. I'm walking down the aisle. This is in your house, man. Should I pick up Two-Pace? Listen to this. Two-Pace pops up. You calling Siri? You talking to Lex? Them niggas is in your house, man. Listen, man. I don't know what they doing. They in your house. We tested all of the time.  I'm telling you they in your house. No, no, no. You don't want to believe me. There's apps on your phones. Look, I'm going crazy now. See these folks that run me crazy. Our daughter told us, our daughter told us, you know like whenever you download an app or you download anything on your phone, they'll always tell you accept whoever reads all of that. You probably never read it. You give them permission for so much on your cell phone and we don't know because we don't read it. We just say, okay, accept because we want the app. Accept.   Yeah, well, only thing, if that app will do what I needed to do, edit, make a collage, nigga, I'm accepting it. Yeah. If that all going to give me to be able to make a good video, I'm accepting it all. I don't know what else it's going to do in my house, but I'm accepting that thing. I don't care. I don't care. I just got to get my picture out so that you can see me on the ground. You're starting your life away. You just going to accept it. You doing too, son, I'm trying to. You just don't talk about it, nigga, you doing? You're like, I got to get that app, man. How you doing it?  You really don't, you don't have. I bet you I picked your phone up right now. You got about four or five of them apps. One, nine, nine. Some of them that I don't even probably use, you're like, I had to have that, what? Talking about apps, have you done an app for your restaurant yet? That's dope. I haven't, I haven't. I never even thought about that. I got to do, man. Because everybody's doing that now. Let me tell you. App for the restaurant. Yeah. And everything is, because there's a cookie shop that just opened up in Mesquite somewhere. I didn't even know about it until one of them ads came up on social media. And I'm like, oh, grand opening is right up the street? And they opened until 12 midnight. Never heard of a cookie shop that opened until 12 midnight. But anyway, so you went under, you know, you click on it, it takes you straight to the app. You have to go to the app. Okay. Not even a website anymore, to the app. And then you gotta download that. Yeah. But that's the same way that even like Vlad, when our show went viral and Vlad and Will started picking it up, you go, you have to go click, it goes straight to their website. You know what I mean? So everybody doing things to try to control the narrative, man. Now let me ask y'all a question. Go ahead. What made y'all start this? This is like, you just popped up out of nowhere with this. First thing, I see you on the plane selling clothes and we going to Magic and Agenda together.  Thank you. But the reason we done it, cause I like to talk, I always like to talk. You do. So that's the, that was the whole game. Like I'm good at talking. Yeah. I knew I was good at talking years ago. Like. And selling. And selling. Good at talking and selling. I'm one of the best. I mean, I did, I got records on selling stuff in certain amount of days and time. So I was like, man, you know, with the, with COVID coming in and the way things was looking, I had to find a way to be successful in the midst of, you know, in the midst of everybody not going nowhere. So in my mind, I'm like, niggas ain't coming in those stote, niggas got masks on, they scared to go outside. So I said, man, we're going to do a podcast. You remember, I was like, man, we're going to find a way to get these niggas up in the stove. So, and so it worked, right? So that was the whole game. So, and but then when I did it, my partner that played for Philadelphia, he called me. He was like, Baltimore, he played for the Ravens. He was like, man, you good at that, man.  Like you look good doing this, what you should have been doing. So I got them calls like a lot, right? Like everybody kept saying the same thing. Like, damn, that's what you supposed been doing. I watch you every day. Then you start getting people from Africa and all over the world just start saying, hey, you doing a good job. You know what's funny about it? I think God put us through a lot of different things to get you where you need to be because you look at your life and you're like, I had to go through this to prepare me for where I'm at right now. You know what I mean? So I really think that that's one of the main reasons.  So everybody just, and then it's dope. Y'all get to do it together. And we kicking it. Like, it's fun. You know what I'm saying? Like we ain't, we doing what we do. We having a good time, man. So everybody take notes, y'all.  But we used to always hear it, even with the clothing store, they're like, how can you run a business with him? Why don't you do it by yourself? Or why don't he do it by yourself? How can y'all work together? Y'all always hear people say, I can't work with my husband or my boyfriend. We'll get into it all the time. We hear it all the time. Yeah, and it's- I like best friends. Yeah, we be kicking it. Like, it's a chemistry. Like we like to hustle. She'll hustle.  She'll try to sell some plates or anything. If I'm gonna watch y'all, I'll be like, nah, we ain't doing that, dude. Let's turn the cameras on you.  Yeah, but that's the game, man. Like people be like, where y'all from? We wanna hear y'all's story. We hear that all the time. But at the end of the day, man, it's a blessing to be here. Really, God got us here.  My kids got to grow up in this store and the other stores that we've had. And they basically know how to run these cameras. They just quit on me. You just missed them by two months ago. They used to be here all the time. They quit. They didn't care nothing about the road.  You wasn't paying them enough. They didn't care. They didn't know. They get money.  You wasn't paying them enough. Bro, you can pay them. They didn't even care about fruit snacks no more. They spoiled, bro. They said, no more fruit snacks, pretty much from you.  You didn't even need a spoil, bro. They've been making money here a long time. So they think they don't really, they can make money when they want to. They come up here, make the little money and leave. But I'm locking the doors now. But you know what I think about too, with that question you asked, but the true meaning of an entrepreneur is you always find different avenues. Different avenues. You do the same thing. That's true. Even if you mastered one and you have that one, you gotta turn and create another one and then another one. Nah, that's true. That's true. If you come to my studio, you'll see it's about seven different ways of making money on that one. Maybe more. How many is it? It's a good 20, right? It's a good 20 ways to make money at the studio. Let's talk about that studio, man. Let's talk about the startup. When you first started, how difficult was it to establish that and make people believe that you were serious about it? And why did you choose that avenue at that time? Well, yeah, when I first started, I was thinking about moving it to Atlanta, doing it in LA and I actually had big investors that was willing to pull up a lot of money for it. But I really wanted to build something close to my daughter because I just had my daughter around that time. So she was around two or three years old. So I was like, let me build something that she can enjoy and she can grow up in. I made her a little office in there and we just started building it. And it just kept growing and growing and growing. But I always wanted to keep it safe because studios are the most dangerous place. Definitely. You could be at it. Yeah, yeah. So I made sure. Bulletproof windows? Not bulletproof windows, but it was definitely cameras on every block, on every corner, every section of the studio. It's cage doors, everything's locked up. So you can see a person coming from a mile away. But at the end of the day, it was just something I felt like Dallas needed. Dallas need culture. When you think about Dallas, what is our culture? Like what would really Dallas stand for beyond the Cowboys? And not too many people could say anything. So it's like you gotta have more things here that's developing the culture and just keeping everybody together and bridging gaps and just bringing unity in the city. What were some of the roadblocks that you hit though, like early on?  You always got the people that say, I could do what you do or the people that say, let me take this idea from you and take this idea and then they try to duplicate the idea. But I've had that studio for 12 years. Yeah. So for me to be there 12 years, it must be doing something. Doing what you're supposed to be doing. So when you think about just other studios that have popped up the competitors, what did you feel like you stood? Like was it a competition at any time or was there any competition? Well, honestly, I never thought of anything being a competition because like everything I do is like in-house and I mess with a lot of people like outside of Dallas. So my goal was try to bring people from outside to Dallas and then that way they can in a mean with a lot of the Dallas people. Because when people think of Texas, they don't think of Dallas. They think of Houston, you know, anytime when I'm in Atlanta and be like, hey, you been to Texas? Oh yeah, I've been to Houston. That's what they say. But they'll never say I've been to Dallas. So it's like, okay, we need to change that. Who are some of the big artists that then showed up at your studio? Man, I mean- Some of the big ones. Just within the last year, we done had Young Dofter, Keith Blockdale, Maree, we done had Mooney Lone, we done had NLE Chopper and we done had Cameron, we done had Dipset, we done had Post Malone, we done had Dave's Loaf. Damn. Yeah, we done had a lot of- Some heavy names. Yeah, we done had a lot of air bidders. Well, no, no, this guy been working a long time. So I remember when I seen it, I was like, man, where you going to studio? He's like, I don't want a studio. No, damn. I got that on tape, you know, until now. Oh yeah. Now, one thing I did was I always keep some cameras around if you really think about it. Yeah, I always had a camera in somebody's- Somebody's holding the camera around somewhere. That's the way you have to be, man. I like that. Because you like, okay, something special might be about to happen. Like, I can pull that. Soon as Chris was over here, I shot out Chris Justice and he was like, you know, I went to a restaurant, this dude named Radio, I say Radio.  You remember I made a video for it. And I was like, he's like, yeah, I was like, damn. I said, man, give me his number or go. He said, I'm gonna go over that tonight because he really felt, he been with me ever since he was a kid, he been around me. So it's like, he'd say, I'm going over there. And did he come over there or did he didn't come back? I think he did come over. Yeah, yeah, Chris, Chris, something else, but he's like security, so he always working. Yeah, man, the studio is crazy, you know, it's 5,000 square feet, so it's a bunch of things going on there. 5,000 square feet is big. That's huge. Did you bill it out or was it- We built it out from the ground up, man. It was a big eggshell. Wow. Yeah, if you're going on YouTube, you never satisfy life and you just grow all the way down. Like you'll see like the beginning stages and us like building out the studio and putting up the walls and putting up the floors, like everything. So was it contractors or was some of your main, like any of the guys that helped you from the beginning have been with you throughout the whole time? Yeah, it was a lot of the people that was here with me the whole time, like my right-hand man, which is the one that I kind of like did everything with and he was the first person I put on the team, which is Ian, Ian Brown. And that was like my right-hand man, but he passed away like five years ago. So, you know, that was a big hit for me and it damn near took me out.   You know what I'm saying?  But something kind of like led me to be like, you know, don't do that just yet. You know, try something else. And it just persuaded me to move to Atlanta. And when I moved to Atlanta, like I got to see what teamwork really looked like.  And once I saw that, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna get Dallas another go. Take that blueprint and take it home. Yeah. And I literally like left Atlanta, came back and like as soon as I came back, COVID hit. So then it was like, okay, this was perfect timing because I could have been out there during COVID, but came back, started building up my team. Now we got the dream squad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, shout out to the dream squad, man. Everybody that's on the team, man, holding it down. Yeah. And a lot of these people here, man, these are the main reasons why, you know, I really wanted to come back, you know what I'm saying? And wanted to really make this happen.  Yeah, yeah, you gotta have a good, strong team with you or back in you or you back in them.   But we cool, you know what I'm saying? But at the end of the day, it is good to have a good team with you, man, and that's a proud little one. So how was Atlanta, like when you say, what studio down there stood out, you know, shout out to Zay Tobin and the niggas that be hit me back on the DM. You are the niggas, y'all know y'all is. We're trying to ignore the truth, nigga. You know what I'm saying? But yeah, how was it down there? Nah, it was dope, man, you know, I got to see Outkast, you know, Big Boy and his studio. I got to see, I think it's a game. Got to see quality control, you know, got to see a lot of like big studios out there and like see how they team really work together and just really like break bread with each other, you know? And the biggest difference I saw is like, you know, people in Dallas, we like to fight over a hundred dollars. Lily, fight over a hundred dollars.  But like, they're trying to get a hundred dollars of a hundred percent and break off nobody. In Atlanta, they're trying to get 10 million dollars and get 10 percent and break off everybody. Everybody, you know, to where everybody in the camp is millionaires. But you'll have someone in Dallas, where they'll get like 10 million dollars and be like, all right, I'm gonna give a couple hundred dollars to these people right here. Exactly, so how do we change that narrative? You know, I'm one of them big guys that come at you with them. How do we change that?  You know, it was really country-minded. You know, a lot of this was farmland, you know, it wasn't as developed as it was now. So, you know, I feel like we just gotta kind of create the generation to where it's like, all right, now let's teach the generation on how to break bread with each other. Yeah. Because nobody really taught us. Even when we was hustling, like, what was we hustling for? Yeah, no, I just had a lot of cars. I didn't even buy a house. You see? So we was hustling. 100,000 in the roof, nigga. No car, nothing else. Let me quit talking, these cameras. But nigga didn't have no, yeah, mama just mad. Why you got 10 cars in your, nigga? I don't care, nigga. And I ain't got that. I was the same way, you know? We didn't know. You went from 10 bikes to 10 cars. 10 cars. Just doing something because we, but we were hustlers. It was endless. But we didn't really just, I didn't know, I didn't know what to do with that. I just felt like I was a man, nigga.  Nigga, I'm crazy, nigga. You see? But in Atlanta, I feel like their OGs taught them instead of going by 10 cars, let's go by 10 benesys. That's dope. Investing. And let's invest in the people around us because the people around us are professionals. You know what I'm saying? Because they actually went to school out there. There's a lot of, you know, black colleges out there. So they all educated. They all got to understand like, all right, this is what I went to school for. Now I just need the funding. So the dope boys got the funding.  All right, you want that store, boom. All right, you want the studio, boom. Now let's do the Benesys. So everybody's working together, breaking bread with each other to where now everybody's pulling up with their own cars. But you say that, but then a lot of this stuff happened also with the music, the entrepreneurship. A lot of that was dealing with the music and with the 360 deals these niggas was getting. They was mad about the 360 deal, but these niggas were getting money. It was a bunch of that happening as well. And so they, how did that play a part in it? Cause we know it happened because a lot of money get divved out. These niggas were getting $30 million from these major universal and all these different, I remember a shout out to my boy, George Lopez here who had gotten, me and him were going to lunch after this time, I'm talking too much, but that's my guy and you know, you get a big bag and then you go out and do different things with it as well. How do you think that played a part in the whole scheme of things? For Atlanta? I mean, I feel like for Atlanta, like, you know, when they were breaking bread with each other, they just had like a different understanding. Like, you know, we're trying to create longevity. You know what I'm saying?  So even when they did get a 360 deal or a best up deal, they knew what they had to do to get out the deal. So they worked their way out of a deal and they got the fame, they got the money and they were able to like have all their percentage back. So a lot of times like people don't realize like the first deal you sign is going to be the worst deal. For sure. The second deal going to be a little better. Third deal going to be even better.  It might not even really be too much of a deal because now you already on top. Get it. But if you don't get to a deal and you try to just make the deal yourself, that's when you end up working till you like 40 something, trying to fund your music career and nobody's putting you on because every chance that you take, you deny because you learned from the internet, aw, I ain't signin' nobody, I ain't doin' no deal at all. I'm just stayin' independent. Like nah, like someone gotta believe and you can put up money behind you. Because if you ain't got the money, someone gotta put up the money behind you. Same thing with a business. You right. You know, you can't start a business without money. You gotta have.  They got the bank. How much percentage does the bank get if they gonna use some money to start up a business? They feel to go at you with that interest rate. I took 50,000 from the bank and the bank said I owe them 300,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So think about that as your first deal. Yeah. 50, I owe them 300. And I'm like yo, I need to pay these niggas back ASAP because this interest is goin' up. It's goin' up. You know what I'm sayin'? See, that's why I love to like pay it off and say hey, apply the principle, apply the principle. I don't wanna pay this interest because that's where most of the money comes in. So you gotta think the same thing in your music career. Let me go ahead and pay this deal off so that way the person that believed in me first, then we could renegotiate the deal and now the deal's even better. Yeah, I done had a lot of people.  So if you got money, you don't need credit. I'll be on it like that. Like nigga, I'ma put up to 50. I'ma put up to 100. But a lot of people, I heard, it was an officer, I was gettin' my hair cut, he was like, you crazy for thinkin' like that. I'm like nigga, when you on two different pages, I feel like a nigga gotta be a boss, he gotta put that money up. And growin' up in America, you don't have credit.  You know what I'm sayin'?  I'm makin' money out the dope. Yeah. You know what? God, I can't think like that cause I'm thinkin' of tryin' to do somethin' great. Niggas, you might be feedin' a dead horse. Exactly.  So, when you talk, you know you wanna add somethin'. So, I've seen you over lookin' everywhere.  Yeah. So, how do you keep your studio up to date? Like, how often do you update like your equipment? Like, what kind of equipment do you have now? I mean, it's definitely a lot of money, you know. Every few years, you dumpin' out like a cool 100,000, couple 100,000, just buyin' new equipment, buyin' new cameras, buyin' the new software, the new programs, like, you know, you always gotta keep updating what's goin' on and keep expandin', so, you know, it's never endin' game of how much money you puttin' into a studio, but also at the same time, it's just like, you gotta be chasing the bag. So, as long as you're chasing the bag, it don't really matter like how much money you putin' in because you're still gettin' it back. Yeah. Okay, because the reason why I asked that was because when I think about the artists that comes to the studios, especially the bigger ones, they're always lookin' for the ones that are up to date with the high tank, everything. You know what I mean? They want quality.  They don't want that. They don't want that quality. Make sure that you put in that time and that effort because I always say, if I'm gonna eat at a restaurant and spend $200 for my meal, it gotta look good. Yeah. Not only look good, it gotta taste good. I don't always care about it lookin' good. I'm care about it tasting good.  Yeah, this time, that always, this is it. And I'm gonna be honest with you. I done seen this for years.   You know what I'm sayin'? Because you get the little bit of steak the more it costs the smaller it gets. Exactly. You payin' for the name, man. You playin' games with me, man. You payin' for the name. The name that's on that building when you walk in, that's what you payin' for. No, I ain't payin' for it. You payin' for the Instagram picture. You payin' for the Instagram picture. That's $200 to snap that. Say so. Don't post it. Let me ask you this, like, so Dallas, you know, you said Dolf earlier, he had been to, how did that affect you, you know, when Dolf passed away? Was he, somebody that you talked to or he just, a business deal? Nah, we actually got to be on stage together.  You know what I'm sayin'? Yeah. So it's like, for him to be doin' that in his city and put on for a lot of people in his city and really get it from like the ground up and really like learn business for his people and then to see his people take him out, like, that just kinda like messes you up, be like, damn, like, is that gonna happen in my own city? Man, it's a lot.  I always watch your back. You can watch your back as much as you want, but I'm like, hey. I knew you can get here from across the street. Yeah, you know what I'm sayin'? You need to get your scope, you need to scope. You only got a 180 view, you know what I'm sayin'?  You need to scope you. You better be prayed up. You better have some faith. That's what the problem is, people don't, you don't understand, you gotta have faith. One day you're here and the next day you're gone, like I've been sayin' on that pimp song and UGK.  Bein' real, always be one to understand that, yeah, every day is a blessing. Let me take it down one time. I always say you gotta hope for the best and prepare for the worst. There you go.  So when I'm movin' around, I'm thinkin' like I, I gotta make sure all my equipment is on, you know what I'm sayin'? I got my phone, I got my keys, I got my gun, everything's got everything on me. And then I gotta make sure, where am I goin' today? I go to this place, what threats can I run into? You know what I'm sayin'? So it's like you gotta kinda plan out your day and plan out what you're doin' when you're movin' around. And then also like if you got money, plan out what car you gon' drive. Yeah. Because certain cars gon' track certain attention. You gotta tell me. And don't drive the same car all the time. Exactly. I don't understand why people do that.  And it's very distinctive. Yeah. I mean, everyone in his car is matched. And that's the part where people be like, well, they set him up, well, if you at home and everybody know how you look and it's just somethin', man. That's why I had Chris on the show, the guy that's a security, you know? Like if you got a guy like that with you and they don't even cost that much, this guy's supposed to be watchin' for that and wantin' that kinda smoke. I'm bein' real. And you know you got this kinda money, but you get comfortable in your own place. I mean, you gotta realize, isn't that just him? You got all type of people. When Mo3 passed away, it was a weird look to me. Like damn, how he look, this don't look like it shoulda be even happenin' this way. I'm bein' real, like I see him in the kitchen one way and then like this, it didn't match for me. So you could keep goin' that guy, the great. You remember him? He was out of all my life on hustle, just that dude. He died at the wildfires. He got killed in New Orleans. Or that pork pop smoke. I can keep goin'. Yeah, King Von, like King Von, they scufflin' a little bit, rummin' a little bit, but I'm talkin' about just damn, like it happenin' and you're not expecting it to happen that way. Yeah, that's usually how it happens. The unexpected is how they get you. Yeah, but so you say Dallas, you think you wanna try to pull this thing together and make it to where everybody can look out for each other. That's what I've been tryin' to do, but don't you think that you got people that's in position here in the city that benefits from it being the way it is? Oh, they definitely do. Oh, I got downed in, I got downed in, nigga. I came in with the bloat in it, nigga. It's some niggas that's set in position that if it changes, they lose money, so they don't wanna see it change. Yeah, yeah, what about them niggas?  But you see what I'm sayin' Hopefully, you know, I say if everybody in the city has somethin' poppin' goin' on and every label in the city was makin' millions, you know what I'm sayin'? Not everybody, but you know, good select few, a good chunk of few, you know what I'm sayin'? All them people that is thriving off of the things that's negative can thrive on somethin' that's positive because now, like, the labels can give you the money what you been lookin' for, you know what I'm sayin'? Because you gotta wait for somethin' bad to happen to make money. Compared to just havin' somethin' good that's always happenin', and now you makin' money all the time. You know, people gotta really look at it like, all right, I wanna get money all the time, not just when somethin' bad is happenin'. Yeah, or when it's happenin'. Or if you have more people who want to see the city come together rather than then they can all come together and overpower that person that's just, you know, wanna stand. Well, what about a label? Like, there is no major label. Yeah. And when you look at Atlanta, you got QC, you got all these different big labels that everybody's just, bam, I hope. Never satisfied. Okay, okay, I'm just sayin'. Never. Oh, so this is where we goin' with it. So how many artists, local artists that you feel is hot, I know Big Ex the Plug mentioned you the other day when he was on my show. Yeah, he's hot.  Now, Big Ex the Plug, man, he's doin' his thing, man. Shout out to Big Ex, man, I love his movement, I love what he's doin'. And just the fact that we did a showcase to see who's the hottest artist in the city and he won the showcase at Dallas. And to see him blow up from there, I think that's awesome. Man, I definitely agree with him. And he's humble, he's real. Yeah, now he's cool, laid back, chill.  I don't wanna work with all these big superstars and these big producers. I wanna work with the people that put me on. I wanna work with the people that put me in that position. So one of our producers that I signed, which is Dialogue, he was like, I'm taking Dialogue everywhere I go. It was like, I only want production from him because he's the reason why I got signed. So why would I go work with Beethoven or, you know. Yeah, yeah, any of those other big names. Any of those other big names, you know what I mean? I like that. So when he did that, I respected him a lot more. That's what made Atlanta like it was, too, that they stuck with their producers and they stuck behind the people who made them who they were. So that's a start. Yeah, that was a start, that was a start. Who else put you in the mind of like a big extra plug that's young, that's coming up and coming right now, in Dallas or in Fort Worth? Well, it's couple people. Male or female. Or in East Texas. Yeah, I mean, it's a couple people I'm looking to sign. You know, and it's a couple people that I have signed. So you know, I've signed Lardi, Lardi B. Okay. You know, she's a female artist.  So definitely check her out on her page, Lardi. So when you think about the Dallas movement and you've seen the Dallas Boogie movement and all the other stuff that was going on and it's transpired and moved and moved. So are you good with what the sound of the music is coming out of Dallas? I mean, I feel like the Dallas Boogie, I feel like that's dope. You know, it's cool. Everybody vibe to it.  But it's like, it's a short life, you know? The life don't last long. So it's like, what are you gonna do beyond a dance song? Okay.  And culture is to me is like, you know, how do you create the Houston culture? Yeah. Houston has a whole culture that has nothing to do about dancing. It has everything to do about what they riding, what they doing.  Hey, haircut. I ain't never see you with the booty.  I mean... I ain't never seen you with the booty, nigga. You know what I'm saying?  But that was a part of the culture here, right? But I had the swangers, you know what I'm saying? Dallas was known for the swangers. So you had them? Dallas was known for the leather pants. You know what I'm saying? Dallas had the leather pants. You know what I'm saying? The big buckle, heavy belt buckles. Yeah, yeah, that was dope. Yeah. But you know, I feel like we just gotta have something that the world wanna follow. I get it. You know, because like we copied a lot of things that we saw. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like when we saw LA rocking chucks. We copied that. We bought chucks. You know what I'm saying? When we saw New York rocking the snapbacks, you know what I'm saying? And they got the Timbs. Should we buying Timbs? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what are we doing in Dallas is making someone in Atlanta wanna go buy what we doing? No, no, no, you 100% right. See? So you know, same thing in Houston. Everybody got the cups, you know what I'm saying? They got the little cup with the little, they got all of them put money into them cups. So now you see everybody's pulling up.  I feel like Houston started that. Okay. So Dallas just has to like be proactive with the movement and their culture and just really to kind of define like, what are we doing? How are we stepping out, you know? And we can always reinvent the wheel. You know what I'm saying? They ain't gotta be just like what we did in the past.  We pioneered us too. So, you know, we just gotta come together and just be like, all right. Shit, I like how these young kids moving right here. You know what? I'm gonna put them on all the way. We're gonna put them on the big stage. We're gonna put them on the big screen so that way everybody can see it, you know? And then, shoot, even movies. Movies help culture move a lot. A lot of movies we watched like Boys in the Hood and things like that. They made us really attracted to that hood. You know what I'm saying? What they were living like and how they were doing. You know? And I feel like Dallas needs things like that. All right, man, that's radio all right evening. Y'all ready? Y'all ready? Real fresh, like. Yeah, yeah, so. We need more of that. So all them film directors, come on down. And the ones in Dallas, let's work. Come on. Man, that'll be good. And that's where everybody's going now, is film. All the comedians, all the rappers. Everybody is branching off into film. And I love the way how 50 has been putting a lot of people onto his film, you know what I mean? 50 is one of my mentors and one of my people I look up to, Robyn Hamlin, Pete Diddy, those people really created their own wave. And in their wave, they made everybody else follow it. That's it, that's it. So I'm trying to do the same thing with my wave. That's why Never Satisfied is such a big thing to me. Never Satisfied. It's huge because it's like, if you satisfied, what's the point in living? I like the name. I want to hear your top three artists of all time dead or alive. Top three artists? Number one. I would say Nas. Nas. Nas. Number two. That boy like Nas. You didn't say Jay-Z, you didn't say Jay Wilde ago when you said people you look up to. You don't really mess with Jay-Z, nigga. I see that. I mean, J.Coup, but Nas was always better, man, you know what I'm saying?  Nas is the one, man.  I'm with you on that.  For sure. You know what I'm saying? I rock for Pimp C. Go ahead. Number two. Number two, I would say Big Crit. I like Big Crit. Yeah, Big Crit. I like Big Crit. We been trying to, we trying to get him on the show.  You know what I'm saying? I like that. Big Crit. Shout out Mississippi. Number three. Number three, I would have to say Drake. Drake. A lot of people say Drake. That nigga like Ice Water nigga, this real crisp and clean with his whole brand. Nah, but the dope.  The nigga just real, yeah, presentable. Nah, the dope part about Drake, man, is the way he move. And how he move with his team. How he move with his team. And how he move with his people. Like I actually got to like be in Toronto with Drake. You with Drake? Yeah. Aw, I'm jealous.  Nah, girl, you with Drake nigga? Yeah, and like just to see him. Let's talk about that, yeah, yeah. Nah, nah, just to see him in his home city and how his home city treats him. They love him. Like they love him to death. They call him the boy for a reason.  And like he got his own special section at every favorite restaurant that he goes. Like they got everything set up for him. Like we went to the Toronto game during the playoffs and it was like, you got your own club in here? Like how does Drake have his own club in the stadium?  He got his whole family in there. Everybody's watching the game. They giving out free drinks, free food. I'm like, man, this is dope. Like we need to do this in Dallas. How can I call that Mark Cuban and get on that same level? I used to always argue with people about Lil Wayne and Baby and Drake and him because I felt like, okay, y'all talk about Birdman and all and I get it, but Drake ain't never even had no problem with none of that because that nigga a hustler, man. He ain't even let none of that. They like, oh, they taking this, they doing that and they mad at it. And I was like, man, Lil Wayne had that same opportunity but he was so caught up in his artistry that he wasn't really on his business like that. You gotta be able to be a person that juggles things well to do what Drake doing. You see what I'm saying? Drake definitely figured out the code. He definitely broke the code. But Lil Wayne helped get him to where he at. So I get it, but I'm just saying, I think Lil Wayne a whole different level, man. But they also came from two different eras. They did, they did. Lil Wayne came from an area where it was a lot more rough, you know what I'm saying? You had to do a whole lot more flossing. You know what I'm saying? They invented bling bling, you know what I'm saying? Drake came in the area where it was like, man, all right, you just gotta be saucy, you know what I'm saying? Real sauce. As long as you saucy and you take care of your team, you're cool, you ain't worried about none of that other stuff. Yeah, no, I get it, man. That boy there, he ain't Mr. Beatty, he sure will mess with you woman and all that, yeah. Oh, he'll stay down. One thing they told me, it was like radio. Do not bring anybody you like around Drake. See what I'm saying? If you like her and you think she's somebody special, do not bring her around Drake. See what I mean?  I was like, you know what? Duly noted, you know what I'm saying? Definitely not bringing on around Drake. Man, so hey, man, so what's your handle on IG, man? Do somebody trying to just reach out and say, man, what is, cause I seen the animals, man. That's one thing I wanna ask before we get off here, man. I seen you with a tiger.  I don't know what that was. I seen you with snakes.  Man, honestly, I relate to animals more than I relate to people. Damn. You know, I feel like an animal can lie to me.  You know what I'm saying?  An animal, they ain't gonna do all that.   You know what I'm saying? What's the craziest incident? Where do you keep all of these? No, I didn't even got a jungle over there somewhere. Yeah, I wanna know where do you keep all of them.   But, you know, I definitely rescued a lot of animals, you know? Yeah. How many do you have?  Then he got lines over there. But like, I'm trying to understand, like, what's the craziest thing that's done happened with the animals? The craziest thing was being on Tiger King. Okay, let's talk about it. You know, we was on Tiger King before Tiger King was ever created. And we started shooting that show and we were shooting it for a different reason, you know? And then like, once the lady got her arm chopped off by the tiger, they pretty much counseled our show. Damn. So we was like, all right. Like, damn. And you saw that.  Yeah, he was there when it happened.  Y'all going to stop us for a chopped off arm? Yeah, y'all both got stopped. He bit it off, he bit it off for it. So the lady, you know, she had this big jacket on and she reached in the cage when she was supposed to normally have like a little like tool that she's supposed to reach in the cage.  She trying to feed the tiger? Is that what she was doing? Yeah, she was trying to feed the tiger but she reached in there and did it with her hand instead and the tiger just did one swipe to the arm which is the arm was laying on the floor. Yeah, that's what tigers do. Hold on, his nails are that sharp. Yes, his nails are. That it can just. Yeah. Yes. Well. Wow. That's what tigers do. I thought it would be like a cut or something.  Wow. Cause they use those as chew toys. So, you know, they feel like an arm. Like, what is that to a tire? Damn. You know, so once that happened, we were like, yep, show's canceled.  And we had like all these hard drives and all this footage and we was like, damn, what are we going to do with this?  Then we started like deleting stuff and putting more stuff on there and filming other stuff. Cause we just had a ton of hard drives with just footage.  He was like, yeah, I can do whatever y'all want with it. We're not doing the show no more.  Damn. And we use it and I was like, how much? Yeah. How much you paying? That was a blessing in disguise. Oh yeah. Right at COVID. See, that was right on time. Right on time. You probably be like, dang, I shouldn't have deleted some of that stuff. What? What?  I was like, y'all, everybody fired. Why would y'all do something like that? So what's the next venture for you? Next venture, man, just get these artists signed. You know, I'm trying to work on a major, major record deal. So I'm just manifesting it right now. I'm looking at a major label deal that's going to open up the floodgates for Dallas and sign some of the biggest artists you've seen. Man. And I can't wait. That's my goal. Because I already got my little team together. As soon as you do it, nigga, I'm knocking on your door. I got people, I need you to sign me, nigga. Yeah, yeah, I know how the game goes. I am taking this show on the road. But no, man, thank you, man. I want to know, how many more animals do you intend to get? Are we back in the mountain? I want to know, what kind of animal do you want, right?  Now, my goal is to get a giraffe, you know what I'm saying? The one on the giraffe? Yeah, like, I just want to know. A baby giraffe? No, then you want the big-headed giraffe with the tongue on it.  He want to be, like, coming to America. He wake up and he look out in the backyard and he can see all those animals. Wait right there, King. Yeah, you know what I'm saying?  And them giraffes ain't cheap. They cost the same amount of a lamb again.  And it probably costs, like, a lot to ship them over here. No, it costs a lot to feed them. So if you get ready to buy a giraffe and you been on lamb again, what you just told me? Yeah, I want a giraffe. Damn.  Nigga, you give me that giraffe. I'm going to put it up. Does your daughter have a lot of animals too? Do that giraffe, the giraffe run this hole. She do, she do. You know, she had a few animals herself, but you know, I think, I kind of like, I don't know, I might've made it bad because she just grew up with animals and you just get so used to it. Yeah, yeah. I've seen a monkey before. I've seen a tiger before. Like, come on, dad. Like, what are you going to do next? You have to get in her exotic animals. Something like that. There's nothing else that you can show me that's different from what I've ever seen. Like everything I've seen on TV, you got. Wow. That's dope. That's dope. Hey, man, thank you, man. Man, I just want to tell you, we love you. Hey, love you too, man. Without a doubt, Radio. Yeah, I definitely appreciate it. I'm beyond this, man. I never seen this coming. I appreciate you for pulling up. For sure. As soon as I called you. Did y'all learn something? Man, I learned a lot, man. You know what I'm saying? Because we always bumped into each other. We ran into each other about 20 times on the airplane. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but still. There's nothing like having you on the set. Yeah. See this spiritual right here, nigga. For sure. See, I like that. I like that. I like how you use that word right there. People don't understand what spiritual is nowadays. And I feel like spiritual is something that we all have to get in touch with. That's it.  For sure, man. So let's put that on the next show. You know what I'm saying? Make a whole show about being spiritual. Don't let this be your last time coming on Boss Talk 101. Whenever something popping off, you got to show up and show out, right? If you got an artist you're trying to push, I'm your place to come, man. So me and you, we rockin'. When you call me, it's like what? You know, BC them be callin', too. It's certainly what they call me. Whoever call me if a KLC with B's by the pound, who else? So can you take this on the road? Nigga, I'm, what? Can you make this part of it? You know I'm ready, bro. I go anywhere. I'm supposed to be going to 1501 Studio, but I got to come to yours, too, nigga. There you go. Stop playin'. So they already invited me over there. Nah, nah, nah. We got to do Never Satisfy First, then 1501. Okay, I ain't trippin', I ain't trippin'. I will come through. I'm gonna feel real disrespect. Come on, I know everybody. I ain't trippin'. That's easy. You hear them, you know what I'm sayin'? But at the end of the day, man, there's so much love, man. Texas is that on a whole, we got to try to push this thing up, man, to where we can bring everybody together and where people be comin' down here to come to award shows and everything. I'm talkin' about major. And that's something that I'm workin' on with Bobby Husser, man. He'll be talkin' about that cause they do it in Houston. We need to do somethin' for our artists here, man. Somethin' to try to show, hey, man, the new ones, hey, these are new and up and comin'. These here are the ones that are solidified, the ones who got, like, there's Platinum Artists that's in the city. Matter of fact, my boy comin' tomorrow. Bobby Billions will be here tomorrow, like. It's Platinum, it's people who got. He's gonna be at the studio tomorrow. Yeah, so he comin' here first, then he gonna come over to the studio, nigga. That's hard. He's gonna do that. He doin' the listenin' part over there. He doin' the listenin' part. So he comin' here first. And everybody need to check out the hub. You know what I'm sayin'? The hub is just a dope platform that Bay Bay put together. Yeah, I seen that. Yeah. And I didn't know it was at your spot. See, I don't know. Yeah, and I love what he's doin' and I love how he's bringin' the city together. That's what's up. And that's definitely inspiring me to do more just on all avenues of the entertainment industry. So we wanna do that for the actors in the city. We wanna do that for the models in the city. Like, we wanna be able to put platforms together that's gonna bring people together and not divide people. Man, I like that. I can hear it on that note. That nigga did that real smooth. That nigga knew we were in there. They gonna try to hear my show though. He was like, Boss Talk, you know? What a boss talk, man. Stop playin'! Yeah, yeah, the new host. Hey, man, thank you, man, so much for comin' on this show, man. We love you, Radio. Hey, love y'all too. Hey, it's been another great segment of Boss Talk 101. And we out.


Hi there and welcome back to Beyond Networks the evolution of living systems. Last time we left off with the conclusion that systems are real in the sense of being robustly observable pattern processes. They're not just in our minds but there's some there's something graspable out there a dynamic pattern but complex adaptive systems allow for a large number of valid independent perspectives we can look at them in many different ways and in each situation we have an indefinite number of different perspectives that may be making a valid point and I was also at the very end of the lecture saying when formalized in some way those perspectives become models of the system and this is very important because modeling is at the heart of course of systems biology and these models allow us to investigate what the system is capable of doing in this lecture we're going to have a look at what a model really is and how it relates to systems and perspectives and in the next lecture I'm gonna make the argument that these models are tools for understanding epistemic tools rather than representations of a system but we're gonna start out here by sort of looking at how actual systems these pattern processes interacting processes that generate some recognizable pattern or let's call it a behavior pattern is very sort of visual a recognizable behavior of any kind how they relate to more formal sort of systems and that can be in most cases it is some set of relations between mathematical objects for example variables that are described by equations or propositions two things to note here one objects don't need to be things if a mathematical object is a variable it can represent a process because the value of that variable can change over time that's very important the other thing to point out is that mathematical formulations are not the only possible way to make a model formal but you can you can draw a model you can build a model a scale model for example or you can formulate a model in terms of propositions you can logically describe it but the important thing is that a formal system is something that is expressed in our head and the actual system is something that's out there and somehow we want to connect those two things through the process the practice of modeling which tries to bring actual and formal systems into Congress somehow so this is difficult to do and this is a perennial problem in the philosophy of science is how can you judge whether the model that you've constructed the formal system is a good match for the actual system which is sort of out there in scare quotes because you cannot access as we have seen you cannot access that real world directly and so we need to think really hard about how this is supposed to work so let's take a very simple system so simple that it doesn't exist in biology so we'll take an example from physics the linear pendulum this is a very simple system it consists of a rod cord a wire or some such thing with a weight also called a bob at or near one end it is suspended from a fixed point so as to swing or oscillate freely under the influence of gravity of course you know that I'm just going to try to be formal so this is a sort of the sentences you see here already a formal description of the pendulum but we're thinking now about a physical system of pendulum that's swinging the rod can have a certain length the bob can have a certain weight and it can swing more or less widely right so these are variables and parameters of the system we're not going to go into sort of the details of how you make a mathematical model here today we're going to do that one or two modules ahead from now but what we're going to try and do is see how can you formalize this actual system in principle and so because this is physics we can start from general principles first principles and those are formulated in this case those that are relevant of course in Newton's mechanics and his theory of gravitation so this theory is formulated in terms of very abstract terms it uses masses and forces and stuff like that which are entities that you cannot directly detect so we need to somehow relate them to this particular these general sort of concepts to this particular situation to this particular system and also as a side note this is very important note that you don't have to have a general theory to build a model for a system mostly in biology we don't actually in history of course Galileo when he built the first model of the linear pendulum didn't have Newton's mechanics because Newton hadn't formulated that theory yet so there is no need to derive a model from first principles but in this case we can do it so how do we relate those general principles to this specific system how do we build a model that represents this physical system with a bob and a wire and so we need two steps here first we need to interpret the abstract entities of the theory in our particular concept so we need to think about what does force and mass mean for the pendulum in case of the mass it's quite easy so you have a bob and a wire of course and together they have a certain weight and that's gonna sort of influence the behavior of the pendulum actually is it where we have to abstract the weight of the rod out if the model is gonna work so how we actually apply these general sort of entities to a specific situation is not obvious at all take force so this pendulum the bob is attached the rod is rigid the wire is rigid and it is subject to the force of gravity on earth if we do this experiment with the pendulum on earth we have a swinging pendulum on earth okay so what are the forces that this pendulum is exposed to it's not immediately obvious so we'll come back to this when I show you how Galileo actually constructed the model but for now let's just stay at the very abstract level and say okay so there's apart from that so we just we have to interpret what force and mass mean but we also have to identify specific elements of the model with real world entities and it turns out in the case of the pendulum that the force that's acting on the bob is of course dependent on its velocity and its position so interpretation and identification not only link the general theory to the specific model but also tell us what to measure for example so it is the position and the velocity of the bob in this case that we need to measure but without the theory without the model it wouldn't be clear what we would have to look at here so to summarize this Ron Geary in his book draws this whole scheme of how you construct a representational model so we've been we've started at the top we said we had first principles Newton's mechanics theory of gravitation and we had some specific conditions above a rod you know a certain angle of swinging and so forth and we apply that to the linear pendulum model specifically here which requires interpretation of general entities and identification how do they apply in this particular case we can then build this representational model which is the linear pendulum model and we can predict how the pendulum will behave even if we haven't done all the experiments and measured all the positions and the velocities that a pendulum can have so we can predict that is making a specific hypothesis through the model or we can generalize this model and say okay this not only applies to sort of rod and bob but all kinds of systems that behave in a similar way so we can if we can generalize the insight from the model very broadly then we talk about scientific laws or theories and I'm going to tell you in a minute why I put those in skip and scare quotes here another problem of course is how do we come how do we test the model how do we come to the model from the side of the data and there's some steps involved I'm not going to go into this but we're not just naively measuring everything we have to decide what are we going to measure right and and often that choice is already informed by our model and also we do not often fit model to raw data but we somehow model the data as well which is a different kind of meaning of model you can describe a data sets for example statistically variances averages means all these kind of tools that descriptive statistics gives us gives you a simplified model of your data so you're fitting a representational model to a statistical model mostly and not a theory directly to data so Geary is saying here scientific work whether you work in physics or in biology really always works through this intermediate step of building models that represent systems these models are formal systems that represent actual systems which are patterned processes so one really important thing here and Geary has another book apart from the scientific perspectivism book that I've already recommended it's called science without laws I like that title a law and in that book he argues that universal laws do not exist so basically this idea that we can describe the world with universal laws and that we should start our investigation not from a point of skepticism about everything but from those basic physical laws that is sort of upside down because the idea that the world is governed by universal laws and a specific set of universal laws remember this sort of naive realism that I was telling you about that goes back to the cart again him again he's done so much great stuff for science and philosophy that we can forgive him a few major lapses but his lapses were major and you know he invented the idea of a universal law because you could not imagine that God created a universe without law so the idea of a scientific universal scientific law comes from religion and there is no evidence that any such law exists even the broadest theories in physics are limited to certain domains and don't connect up smoothly and this search for a theory of everything in physics so far has been in vain as we have talked about very early on in this lecture so we have to move away from this idea there are laws and also the word theory is often used in this very broad sense so we always have to define where a theory applies and often we work through specific what Geary calls here representational models when we apply the theory to specific systems I can't repeat that often enough so what does that mean let's go back to whimsets beautiful diagram and look at these different scales of the universe remember here up here is that bio psychological causal thicket while down here at the atomic and the molecular macromolecular level up to the cellular level it's very orderly so there's different distinguishable levels we can describe events that happen at one level or another and often we can even combine them like what's the case with classical thermodynamics and statistical mechanics which you can derive used to derive classical thermodynamics okay this is much harder here in this area and the reason for this is that these levels up here are not so clearly separated anymore the world is much more messy so we should not expect to be able to describe this part of the world with very general theories this should not even be our aim I don't think it's useful to look for very broad theories and we'll come back to that when I will talk about the bullshit discussion about evolutionary synthesis later on so basically if you're a physicist and you're working at the level of the atoms a chemist working at the level of the molecules it's easy to have very generalized models which we call laws and theories they apply to very broad domains of reality while in this bio psychological thicket on the right-hand side here you need to work with much more specific representational models and it doesn't make sense at all to try and unify those a priori just before you even have looked at specific cases you can maybe generalize to some extent but it's always a question how far you can generalize the model it's not obvious so let's illustrate this by comparing these representational models this is what Geary does in his book scientific perspectivism he compares a model to a physical map so this is a very complex system it's the center of Vienna and you can see the canal and at the upper right corner probably covered by the little window where I'm talking is the Danube the map shows you a lot of information names streets parking lots restaurants all kinds of things it's a bit overloaded but it's very informative and as you zoom in you can find all kinds of information in this map but of course it also abstracts a lot of information and the point is here that you can imagine to have a lot of different maps for Vienna for example if you're a tourist and you only use public transport you may not know need this whole map that includes also that the sort of suburbs around here outside of the Vienna ring around the center of town so you'd rather use this kind of map which is a tourist map of the first district of Vienna which shows you where all the major sites are that you want to see much more overlookable you can see much more detail where to walk to what to see but of course if you want to go to Castle Schoenbrunn which is on the outskirts of Vienna you need to take public transport so there is this great map off the metro system in Vienna that abstracts away a lot it doesn't even preserve distances or angles it just shows you an abstract grid of the metro lines the suburban train lines where you can connect very simple these bars here they show you where you can connect from one train to the other and the little round circles are just stops very practical and all the unnecessary information is left out so these maps are very simple or very similar to to representational models remember Vienna is a complex system I don't know if it's adaptive we'll see about that but history will tell but you can have all these different maps that make a valid point about Vienna and which map to use depends on your purpose on your problem on your intention so a slightly different aspects of maps and why they're a good sort of metaphors for such models think about depicting the whole world on a flat map this is a problem because the world is a globe and the map is flat and classically people used of course mercators I think it's from the 15th century classical projection that preserves and this was the most important thing for navigators especially it preserves direction so if you follow a straight line on this map you are following a straight line in reality on real earth the downside of this map of course is that it hugely inflates the pole regions if you look at Greenland is massive huge and Antarctica is gigantic on this map which is obviously not the case so lots of people have suggested different alternative projection here is one that was particularly popular when I was in school it tries called Peter's projection it tries to correct for these distortions of the area poles so this map is trying to preserve direction preserve area so it gets a little better than the Mercator one in this sense but it distorts the shape even at the equator none of the continents actually look like that look at Greenland it's totally squished now and all the Canadian islands but also equatorial Africa is pulled like a spaghetti and it doesn't look very good another projection is Winkle triple it's called a triple projection because it preserves direction area and what was I saying direction area and distance okay so it can't be square anymore so it has to be sort of simulating the round shape of the earth but it still suffers from problems for example look at Antarctica just it doesn't look that way this is my favorite world map projection it's very recent Winkle triple was early 20th century the orthograph is from 1999 it depicts all continents on the planet while trying to preserve distance shape and depicting Antarctica as it is so this is a very sophisticated projection that works with tetrahedra and it's really cool but the main point about this is that need none of these maps captures the actual shape you cannot capture a globular shape on a flat surface it's not possible so there's always a compromise you get some ideas some some properties right you get the distance right you get the area right or you get the direction right you can you can sometimes you know shape and you have to compromise between those so you have to sort of choose the projection that suits you for your purpose and the same thing happens with models so with the map you actually design the map Mercator knew that it wasn't a real accurate representation off the globe but for the purpose of preserving direction going straight on the map going straight in the real world it was good enough that's why he chose that projection so basically maps and models are very similar both are objects not statements remember when we were talking about truth I told you that a lot of philosophers are sort of stuck in this world of propositions statements utterances language while we live in the real world and models are not just theoretical constructs they are objects that we use so maps are physical objects and models are abstract objects they can be physical models too I mean scale models again are also a type of a model so in this sense a map or a model cannot be true or false it can only be similar or applicable to certain sections sections of reality or to certain problems you may want to solve okay even this concept of being similar is problematic we'll get to that in the next lecture maps and models are always partial you have to select the features you're interested in imagine drawing a map that has all the details that's not a map anymore that's a reproduction a copy a simulacrum of reality and that doesn't work it's not useful at all so they have to be of limited accuracy and also but at the same time they have to be similar they have to accurately so some things they get wrong they're not accurate but other things the features that they're trying to represent they are trying to be accurate in this sense so they're trying to give you an accurate idea of those particular features that you've chosen to represent and this is why maps and models are always interest relative question relative problem relative it depends on the map maker the model or what these maps are doing and what they're supposed to do so map makers and scientists conventions are also very important this will come back to in the next lecture you there are certain ways symbols tools that we use to make maps and actually if we make a map that's using a very sort of unusual idiom or language to convey its meaning we will have problems using that so maps are only useful if they're built with these standard sort of elements and the same applies to models as well we'll come back to that so to sum up basically we have to switch from seeing models as abstract sets of propositions that represent reality to modelers building models to represent some aspect question dependent aspect so we have to switch from examining the idea of representation to the activity of representing which fits nicely into that picture that I presented to you a few lectures ago about science itself being an adaptive process so it doesn't make sense to take the models out of the context in which they are used so we shift from the products of science to prompt to the process based on actual scientific practice this is an agent-based perspective it focuses on the scientists on the map maker the modeler and involves their intentions their actions their problems their questions how I mean we're gonna take this idea a step further in the next next lecture just before I end this one I want to sort of connect to two insights that we had in the past in this lecture already the first is I want to connect Ron Geary's idea of a representational model and perspectives to Thomas Kuhn's idea of a paradigm they are very similar you may have noticed that already in that in the sense the claims about scientific truths are always made within a certain paradigm or a certain perspective so in this sense the two concepts are almost interchangeable but the idea the notion of a representational model the way that Geary presents it is much more price-related precisely defined you can it's much more graspable and also you can test the idea much more rigorously and argue about it than what Kuhn means by a paradigm in fact there is a paper out there by a guy called Winkleman which analyzes Kuhn's 1962 book very carefully and finds that he uses the term paradigm in 21 different ways and Kuhn himself comes back and says yes paradigms in the second edition of his book he says at least there are at least two ways in which you can interpret the idea of a paradigm one is a very broad you could call it a disciplinary matrix sort of the overall set of theories of tools of methods that a scientist has available at a specific time and place in history so notice that this is broader than a perspective this is everything that exists in science at one time while several perspectives we saw that can coexist at the same time but paradigm in in his book can also mean an exemplar which is exactly the same as one of these representational models for example the model the linear pendulum model is a paradigm way of looking at simple oscillators in all kinds of different contexts okay so the the word paradigm is a little problematic and maybe perspective actually makes this word and and representational models these sort of terms are much more useful because they're more specific one last point here is that also the problem of incommensurability is no longer a problem in a perspectivist framework while coon said that people who adhere to one perspective or another they cannot even talk to each other and they don't use the same language they don't live in the same world in some way. Perspectivism is much more mellow in this sense and says of course it is exactly by comparing different perspectives that we learn about the limitations of our own perspective how we transcend those limitations and learn more about the robust features of the real world. This brings us right back to Miquela Massimi and her distinction between the context of use of a scientific claim and the context of assessment when we talk about perspectival truth. She says knowledge claims are always sensitive to their context of use always made within a perspective just like Geary says but she also says when we assess those claims that are you know claims that are actually accessible across different perspectives those are the ones that are getting things right those convey some perspectival truth and so this is a sort of a way forward from coon's very sort of constructivist way towards staying inside our head but still trying to learn something robustly trustworthy knowledge about the real world. So next time we look at models as tools and the problems with the idea of representation. I hope to see you again. Bye now.


Well, hey there, it's Sandy and today I'm going to make a water-colored Kwanzaa card. You could do this for other seasons as well, other different kinds of scenes in it, but I'm going to use the Hot Mess Lady along with the Love and Light sentiment set that has other than Christmas types of holidays. I don't celebrate those, but it doesn't mean you don't, and it doesn't mean you don't have friends who you could send one to who do celebrate it, and I'm going to give away this card, so stay tuned to the end to hear about how I'm going to do that. And let's get started. So I'm setting it up in my mini-misty, you could also do this in a regular misty. With my stamp at the angle, I want her to be peeking in from the doorway and kind of looking outside to check the snow, she's going to be holding the coffee mug, so I stamped the mug first since it's going to be out in front and used a little bit of eclipse tape to make that mask, and I'm trying to figure out what is the right placement. She has her hand against her head, and I need to make sure I block that hand off. I want to not stamp that hand, because we're going to imagine her hand is actually holding the mug, and she does not have three hands, so you have to be careful of that one. And what I'm doing is checking and double checking and double double checking the placement for my sticky notes. And if I put a row of sticky notes down here, I can see that I happen to have it so that it's exactly at three and a half inches on mine. And depending on your placement, your number will be different, so don't think you have to do the three and a half inches necessarily. So I'm going to double check again after I've got my sticky notes in place, because nothing like getting to the finished end and finding out you totally screwed something up by not checking. So double check that the hand was not going to stamp, and then inked it up with VersaFine Onyx Black ink, because I'm going to watercolor it. I'm doing this on Arches Cold Press Paper. And you can see I've got this nice line now that's masked off that she will not be stamped in that area. And then I drew a line with a pencil, I drew it a little bit further over from where the stamped lines end. I can always finish those lines off, but I want to leave myself room for the hand and for the siding that's going to be on the house. I'll show you how I make the siding. You could make a straight wall and save yourself a lot of effort, but this is overachiever me doing this. The slats in the siding, when they're all in one place, they're going to be the same distance from each other. And I picked half an inch, you could make them any size you want. And then I'm making a little angle for each one, so they look like they're kind of coming out from the building, you know how slats are out a little bit further. And then they attach at the place that's closer to the building and then they hang out. So this little zigzag gives it that sort of a look. And then I'm pretending I have a vanishing point in the distance. And a vanishing point is where things in perspective line up with. So if that vanishing point is out here, if I put my little pencil marking, then each one of these lines will point to the vanishing point. That's how this particular side of the building looks like you're getting a view like your head is right alongside it, you're standing at the side of the house. And it's just going to keep going on all of the slats. And it's going to mostly keep them even, they're going to be roughly even with each other if it's done this way because I measured out those first ones along the edge and then added these long vertical lines. They're vertical now, they'll be horizontal when I turn the guard sideways. And I'm using a fountain pen, you could also use a Sharpie to do any drawing that you want to do, or you could not even do the lines at all, you could just leave it in pencil and start doing your painting. The slats that are on the top, if your view is from the center, you're going to see the underside of them a little bit. So I'm drawing an underside of each one of the pieces of siding. And I did get a little bit off kilter up there, but you know, it's a card, no one's going to care. I'm also not worrying about making this with a ruler because it's a card. So remember that when you try to do things like this. The ones on the bottom half, if you're looking at it and then you're looking down at the siding, you're not going to see the bottom edge. So I'm only putting the bottom edge on the top half of the siding and not on the bottom. And that may be confusing, but there you go. It's what perspective does. It's one of the reasons why I have drawing classes that talk about perspective. Because even if you want to do something like this and we're doing it kind of loose, it's helpful to have some idea what one point perspective is or two point perspective. And it's just really going to help you in creating stuff like this. So finished off her lines, and then I am going to start my painting. And one of the things too I didn't mention the ink that I'm using for my fountain pen on this one is a waterproof ink. It's by a company called Platinum. It's called Carbon Ink, and you can do watercolor with it. So that's one of the reasons that I keep it in my pens, because then I always have the option to do watercolor if I want to. And if whatever pen you use in something like this, you want to make sure it's waterproof. So you could use a micron or a Sharpie, that kind of thing. And I'm going to paint her with the highlights coming from inside the house. So she's peeking out from inside the house, and the light is hitting her cheek. And since this is Kwanzaa, I thought I'd give her some darker skin, so I'm adding a second layer after the first layer is dry. And putting the color in, rinsing the brush, and then just feathering out that edge and pushing the heavier color toward the right hand side a little bit, just lifting up on the lighter side and pushing that color. You could, of course, adapt this if you want to put different hair on her. You could mask out the hair, and then paint your own hair in, or draw it in with a pen, and then paint that, whatever you would like to do. But she's going to just have the hair that she was given in the stamp set. And I'm using a number eight silver black velvet brush. I kind of giggle because I get asked what brush I'm using all the time, and I try for the most part. I don't do it in this video entirely, but I try for the most part to use my silver black velvet brushes because for crafters, they're a decent synthetic brush and they're good enough for cards because you're not painting giant things for the most part. You're painting small things, so you don't need huge, big, sable brushes, which is what I love to paint with. That's my favorite thing to paint with. But with cards, I am working on learning how to color scenes with watercolor more because I want to do that. It's a challenge to me to be able to make a scene that's really small. I typically paint large.  And then when I go back to painting a card, I feel like I'm doing this like little tiny miniature thing. And I like big brushes where I'm holding my hand far back on the far end. And this just doesn't doesn't really do the same thing for me. Just painting little tiny, tiny, tiny, stampy things. But I'm trying and I am working on coming up with a class painting some watercolor backgrounds for stamps. So stay tuned for that. It'll be coming hopefully in the next month or two. Now for the building, I decided to make a red building with red siding. And I mixed up a secondary red and added a little bit of black to it. The first red was actually a mixture of a couple different reds that I have in my palette. You can decide whatever whatever kind of hues you want on the building. But if it's nighttime, make sure you make it nice and dark because what's going to make it look like the lighting's coming from inside the house is the darkness of everything else except that highlight along her cheek and along that coffee cup. So I'm going to kind of blend out the colors a little bit. I've added some shadows underneath each one of the slats. So they look a little bit dimensional and then taking my brush and painting some of the the regular red in between. Now I did use a different brush for part of this. I'm going to use it again in a few minutes. And it's one of my sable brushes, one of my nice ones. And then I switched back to my silver brush because I'm trying to get in some of these little areas like the little edges where the siding ends. And that big brush is a little challenging to get into these tiny areas. Again, it's hard to do with watercolor. So if you struggle in trying to paint watercolor cards, that would be why it's not an easy thing to do. All right, so now I'm going to paint the scene in the background. And you can paint whatever scene you want back there. If you want it to be just a blue sky and that's it, you could just do a blue sky and you could do a night sky. You could use like brush out powders or any kind of, you know, watercolor powders and make a fancy sky with all different kinds of hues in it and whatever you want. You could do it go crazy with it.  So I'm putting the snow at the bottom, just a little kind of curvy line. And again, I'm using my big sable brush. You can see how much ground I can cover with a big brush. It's one of the reasons why I like to paint big.  And then I'm going to try to paint around the stamp. Not real easy with a big brush.  It's a size 10 and it's like any other item that you want to buy. Every company sizes things differently. And this 10 is much bigger than a 10 in the silver brush brand. So there you go. This is a size eight and it doesn't look like it's just one step down from that 10 or two steps down. But it gives me a little more control in painting right around the stamp itself. And getting color into all the little crevasses, which you want to do while it's still wet. You want this whole area to stay wet while you're working on it. And I'm very aware of exactly how wet my paper is as I'm working. I'm trying to work quickly enough that I can go in and put a second coat of the blue paint in there. This is indian thrown blue. I can put a second coat in and have it all blend because the paper is still wet. If it starts to dry, you'll get hard edges. And one of the things that's going to happen here and it happens whenever you're using stamps, it's one of the reasons that I don't always use stamps and watercolor all that much together, especially when you're using dark colors like this, is that it collects around the edges. You know, watercolor just kind of tends to pool around the outside edges, but it also pulls around the stamp itself. Do you see the the blue that's collected around her arm? That's because that's what watercolor does. And I'm like working on trying to figure out how to develop techniques that avoid that. The technique I'm using here is to hide it a little bit. I'm adding more trees in the background so that it's not as obvious that I have this what feels to me like a big blue outline around her hand because that's where the paint collected. I was successful when I tipped the paper in keeping it from pooling along the snow line, but it just collects along that stamp line. And there's not a whole lot you can do about it as far as I know. If anybody's got any great videos you've seen on the topic, please leave me a link. I would love to know how to do that. But in the meantime, I keep trying. So while all this was wet, I used some very watered down paint and my number eight brush to create some branches. And I'm just doing light indications. I'm not trying to make anyone a deliberate tree branch here because that's just not going to look realistic. But I'm going to be putting snow over it. I just want it to feel more like trees. And that's what putting some branches in is going to do. So I peeled off my tape and it's all good and dry so I can add snow using my white uniball Signo Pen. And you can put it over any of the places where you ended up with weird areas collecting paint. You know, if you have some spots that didn't quite work out right, didn't quite blend right, put some snow over it. It's one of my favorite things about winter Christmas. And now Kwanzaa cards for anything in the winter season. You can just add snow and it'll be just fine. Now, I told you I was going to give away this card at the end of the video. So let's do that. I would love for any of you who celebrate Kwanzaa to leave a comment in the doobly-doo and let me know how your family celebrates the holiday because I don't know anything about Kwanzaa. And I would like to learn. So I would love to hear your family traditions around that holiday. And then when I send out my cards, I might send it to you. So there you go. I also want to remind you that we are less than two weeks away from Election Day. And I have taken political advertising off this channel.  We need to hear from everybody. So please do make your voice heard. And I'll see you guys again very soon. Take care. Bye. Bye.


Look, now you know, there's a lot of rap, now I ain't gonna say nothing.   Let me see, let me see. You bet I had no... No, look, look, look, look!  Thank you! Tell him how many shizzles. He got 153 million followers on that bop. No, no, I don't, don't, don't cap it. I got no cap. I'm trying to help you out, big bro. No, I don't do, you ain't got to. This nigga, wait, who wrote it?  I'm dripping. You niggas is just for the record.  I'm doing better than that. How many artists come to you and got that many? From the start, not a lot, bro. Not a lot.  I said an 808 my free, I'm signing up.  No, you're not.