What up, what up, what up, I'm Brandon and Shawn and I'm Cory and we are back with episode number 38 of No Lay Was Necessary podcast where you can catch us every Tuesday, every Thursday on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, wherever you listen to your podcast, chopping up about music, money and the content creator economy. Now, today, oh boy, today my first topic. I love this topic because it's how the social media platforms are tricking you and they're not going to tell you this. But Sir Isaac Hayes, the third. This man breaks it down so beautifully. Let's get into this first clip. Let's take the word follower and throw that out the window. All right, now let's take someone like Kim Kardashian that has 300 million followers. Well, let's turn that to viewers. How many people watch Super Bowl this year? How much did they charge for a 30 second spot? Seven million dollars. So if Kim Kardashian could post a piece of content and instantly reach 320 million people, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Not like the Super Bowls on one day a year for four hours. She could charge $21 million every time she posted a piece of content.  So the moment that advertising came into play, platform started to suppress your content because they have to limit your visibility so they can run advertising. That's how they make their money. But then this is how they trick you. Then they say, well, to get higher in the algorithm, post more content. But by posting more content, all that does is give them more content to run ads in between. They said, oh, we're starting meta-verified. Meta-verified, you can buy your blue check now, but it also comes with higher visibility, higher ranking insert. Yes. That means your content was never reaching nobody. They was lying to you the whole time. You have to listen to what they're not saying as opposed to what they're saying. They're telling you, like, oh, yeah, reach more people and get higher visibility. Fam, if I have 200 million people that want to see me and you're only showing me to seven million people, you're playing with my money.   I have a product to sell. I have a message to get out. Man, man, so a lot. He said a whole lot. Broke that down beautifully. First of all, shout out to David Shans for that video. Y'all could follow him at David Never Sleeps. He's interviewed a lot of dope people, but man. I mean, I think, one, we already know that they're suppressing our views, period. Also, they've been pretty open about that, right? They've been pretty open about it because people figured it out. Yeah. It feels like they had to go ahead and just admit it. It was too obvious, right? But I love the example he uses because that is the truth, right? People would just go straight to the content creator. Yeah. All right. So I get none of that money. He has to platform. So the only way I could force the advertising money to go through V is to make your number variable. You don't know exactly how many people you don't get out to. You can't guarantee those numbers. So it actually becomes more trustworthy to go straight to the platform and say, I'm going to write this amount of ads, put this amount of money, right? And do those specific formulas versus, all right, I'm going to get posted on Kim Kardashian's profile, but it might get one million. It might get 200 million, right? And who knows? We'll see it because it's one thing to algorithmically say, oh, yeah. This is a better post. So it performs better, which so more of her audience sees it. All right. But it's all another thing to say. Well, anybody who's watching the Superbowl is going to see it, right? So it's like, if anybody, all 200 million of my followers, all one million of my followers just saw it and then they decided to like it or not. Well, it would be a whole nother story in terms of how much money we get paid. But we don't even know of all the people who are going to see it because people do pay for that. As long as it gets seen, we're good. Yeah. You know, that's how I used to run on my ads, actually, not ads, like more and more social post campaigns back in like 2016 because I knew everybody was going to see it.  And then I'm going to get my engagement off this other post I know coming two, three times down the line. And so you could run completely different social experiments now.  Yeah, it's a different game. But but yeah, Naiz, he's all point with what he's saying. And my shout out to Isaac Hayes for sure. Yeah, right. It's definitely some some evil genius with the platform. So what just clicked for me is, like you said, well, how can we stop advertisers for one to go straight to Kim Kardashian and straight to the influencer? Right.  So we can't directly take away from that money, right? But I can influence whether or not you even want to give that person money that has a lot to do with this. And then the second thing I thought about it was, you know, it kind of goes back to I guess the consumers role in everything, right?  Like it only happens to the influencers and creators, right? So the common person doesn't even argue for stuff like this because I'm not getting hit. You know, if I got 30 followers now, all people that know me in real life, all 30 of my people are probably saying my my content, right? Yeah, or a post because Instagram knows I ain't trying to do nothing with it.   Like, yeah, we got to put a barrier in between, right?  Because I vaguely remember it was like maybe 2018 around that time when it was like that. But I didn't have a crazy following then. Yeah. So I don't know. You know what I'm saying? I don't I feel like only people that have follow me back then like no, you know what I'm saying?  So it doesn't really like it didn't like hit me the same. You know what I'm saying? Right? No, I don't know what I'm missing out on. I can do I can do the math to make some assumptions, but I don't truly know. So that's what I wonder about wonders. Like, what did Instagram see that made them go? Oh, no, we got to charge off of this type of reach. You know what I'm saying? Exactly. Exactly. Where I think like to that point, if you think about as a content creator, as an artist, whatever, these platforms are always going to be playing this game. Yeah. Because this is to their benefit and it's up to us to understand how you can use it as a tool. Yeah. Fires. Like you always need to be selling something.  Whatever you sell it doesn't have to be a physical product. It could be a message. Whatever you're trying to sell, wake up with something to sell and understand how you're going to use that visibility to sell that because this visibility might not be there tomorrow. So if I'm using TikTok and I'm popping on TikTok and I know TikTok's going to be on this wave, but it might not even be here in five months because I don't know the government might get rid of it. That doesn't mean that visibility isn't valuable in that time, right? So I need to maximize that have somewhere to push people to. And that might not mean, oh, just an email list, just like follow numbers, right? That might mean a product and I'm flipping this product in this period of time. And I think what people are willing to acknowledge enough is some part of the game is always going to be temporary and other moment. And then there's a part of the game that's going to be for the long, right? So let's just say the NFT stuff to happen. NFTs could come back, whatever, right? But Tory Lanez, with all the stuff he has going on now, generally speaking, you can look at Tory Lanez as a successful artist, especially at that time, like, you know, we're talking about like it's running from 2008 to 2018 to like 2020, especially, right? Really getting hot in this period. As from the long haul standpoint, he was set as an artist who has a fan base, right? And gradually still finding moments in his career and also being a songwriter. NFTs comes, let's just say NFTs would only last two years. Well, he made that meal off of that. In that period of time, he resold all the metal, yeah, that product, right? Cool. You don't miss out on that meal when that opportunity comes. You go ahead and take advantage of it. Yes, it's short term. It's not going to be around forever, right? But still, you go ahead and take that meal. You're in position. So you can take advantage of the short term. It's only when you don't have that core foundation that it becomes a bad thing when you get caught up in all these short term things. Because it's like now, when that moment passes, you got to start from ground zero and then go find another way to cap off of the next moment. But when you already got your foundation, the world's your oyster because you're building for the long term at the same time that you're capping in the short term. Yeah. And that's really what the ultimate goal is. So I don't think we should get caught up too much on whether YouTube is going to be hot forever or YouTube shorts is going to be hot for three months or TikTok's going to be hot for two years. It's, none of these things are going to be hot forever. And even if they stay high as a platform, there's going to be different features on the platform that are hotter than others for periods of time. You know what I mean? Because they have to keep encouraging people to have a incentive to go on a specific feature and keep the engagement on them. Like all that is going to continue to change. You just need to have your foundation, all right? So you can make sure you capitalize on these small moments of time, but still almost still be setting the long run and look at it like, hey, I'm just picking up folks. You know what I mean? Like I got my fan base of a thousand and here go these core people. And then, oh, that moment came and it went, but shoot, at the end of the day, I picked up another 50 people from over here. And then I picked up a thousand people in that moment of time. And I picked up another from these random, because it's no different than like a hit track. Like some songs will bring in more people. Some songs will bring in less. The platforms are that same way. Yeah, and like you said, the big thing to remember is that all social media platforms go that way eventually. Right? That's literally the social media formula. Track people over here for free. You know, build an audience, build a community of thriving creators and then boom, hit these motherfuckers with every time. If you go back and look at every app, every social media platform that lasts like 10 years, they all follow the exact same model, right? So, you know, and we're saying it now with TikTok. I'm saying engagement and things that, you know, 2020 we could have gotten for significantly less work. And today, you know, that same strategy doesn't get you a 10th of the video, of the views or the craze. And you have to do things and spend money through advertisements to get to the same effect. Right, so we're watching it in real time happening with TikTok, you know what I'm saying? I remember watching it happen in real time with Instagram. I have to assume that at some point, YouTube shorts is gonna fall victim. I think YouTube can afford to go longer without doing it because they already have such a rich YouTube ad ecosystem, right, they don't need the money as fast, you know what I'm saying, as other platforms do, but eventually they're gonna, one day they're gonna work it to them and be like, all right, that too, you know what I'm saying? Like that, that should gotta go too. So, artists, you know, content creators, I think when you find these pockets to cap on, like realize that you went, you went a window, you know what I'm saying? Like you're either gonna wake up one day and this isn't gonna be as free anymore, you know?  Other than like Facebook shorts. So, yeah, those moments don't last long, you know what I'm saying? Especially when it's with a new social platform, like you have to remember it's hot because it's new right now, you know what I'm saying?   But let me cap on this here while I don't have to pay right now. Yeah, yeah. And shoot, I wanna actually share this other clip by Sir Isaac Hayes III. Now, the teaser is basically look black culture innovates but rarely owns. We're gonna have to ask the direction he's coming from. Strong headline. Very strong headline. And he's actually touching on something that we just talked about in our podcast episode where we're going over hip hop. It's hip hop dead, right? So, shut this clip out right here. Oh, that black culture is the economic engine of social media. Like we give our dances to TikTok, our collab back to Twitter, our skits to Instagram, but we don't own any of the infrastructure of the things that we do. One of the gifts and curses of being someone black is we are the apex of innovation. But we innovate just naturally to the point that we create industries off of our innovation. Right, a chance to find the Grandmaster Flash maybe about a month ago. And I just, there's a phrase or a saying that I always use when I talk to people. I was like the first time and I told him is actually the first time you DJed on two turntables in a mixing, somebody should have pulled you to the side and said, not show a motherfucker what you just showed me, show nobody. Let's go figure out how to build turntables in mix. Right, right. Because everybody that does this is gonna need that. Right. Fast forward DJ culture owned by Techniques, the Serato, you know what I'm saying, we're high in the air. We, everybody should be DJing on the flash, 5,000, whatever. Brian, Grandmaster Flash was sitting up in a mountain somewhere with worth six to seven billion dollars more as he created this culture. Right. I think that what he's touching on is just so important for literally everybody. If you're an artist content creator anybody, you don't even have to be black. Now, of course, this relates back to that hip hop conversation we were talking about and how black people innovate consistently culturally, but we don't scale our own innovations because we move on to the next thing. We're fickle, this is cool. And we're just, you know, a lot of times getting caught up in and I don't even say flexing on each other. Just like, what's that new thing? One thing is hot, it's not. And it's like that within our own bubble. Now realizing it's still newer to the rest of the world. And what happens is, you start looking at the rest of the world as that being a sign that is lame now, right?  They're doing this dance, we gotta make up a new dance because that means it's not cool anymore. But that's when the money starts to come in. You know what I mean? So the mentality definitely has to switch. And then you couple that with the other conversation, the will-I-am conversation, that's the other thing that Isaac Hayes was touching on essentially, right? It's like, yeah, you could do this cool DJ scratch trick. But that can be used to sell these mixers. Yeah, same product, sells them hardware, man. Yeah, sell them hardware, because you always have to be looking for something to sell, wake up at your date and have something to sell. And I think that that's constantly something that artists have to be aware of because you're putting yourself in a position where you're basically saying that you're an innovator in society or you want to be looked at as that way. You will be having people who are watching you and then copying things that you're doing if you're successful at what you're supposed to be doing, content creators as well in many ways. So if you come up with something, yeah, these ideas come, but then you have to figure out, well, if anybody else wants to copy me, what would they have to use to copy me? That's a good way to think of it because I like the way he said at the end, it's like, anybody else who wants to do this will need these to do it. Yeah, I think the bigger thing is looking at how can I make money out of copycatters? Like you said, because- Right. Like I said, even if they want to copy the style, they should have to go through you in one way or another to do it, you know what I'm saying? And I think that ends up being the other big side of it too. It's like, because I used to get artists to benefit of the dollar, but man, maybe they don't have the resources to build on these things that they're innovating around. But then I started thinking about it.  So they're paying attention to the same internet that we're seeing.  Or at the very least, their comments, you know, that's a whole other conversation. So, but you are at least aware that this is happening. And then usually by the time, you know, there are like small artists and the influencers who do impact culture in a big way. And you know, their ideas get taken. That's the story is all the time and so far because they don't have the pool to necessarily pull together the resources to do it. Some of them I think have figured out and make it happen, but there are a lot out there who don't, you know what I'm saying? Like because the influence doesn't go far enough. Now, most of the artists that I think we think about today that are a little bit more culturally impactful because of social media, they have the resources, but they can make a tweet. Like for example, like that was Grandmaster Flash today. He probably would have at least like $300,000 followers. He could have made a tweet or posted like, hey, I got a really cool, cool idea for XYZ product, you know, somebody DM me. And then out of the follower base, it wouldn't be a hurry of the thing. Like it might be like eight or 10 of those types of people following him and like, oh, I would love to work on a product with my favorite artists.  That's true. I've seen artists innovate and build products on accident. You know what I'm saying? Just talking out loud and then followers reaching them out. So now with that in mind, I have to be less empathetical to the ones that don't do it.  You know what I'm saying? You have the reach to pull people together. What you gotta do is talk about it. Like, why aren't you doing those things? Right? So then my mind goes, why aren't they doing those things? And that's the part where I'm stuck on. I think that's part of what I said earlier, where we're so busy looking at other people and this copy and cash. Oh, this isn't cool anymore, right? Those two perspectives, right? It's not cool because other people are doing it, so I need to do something else. Or just, hey man, they're copying me. Stop copying me. It's like, no, that's a sign of your influence. Keep copying me. But as you said, be the gatekeeper for their ability to copy. Yeah, yeah. Cause I think one of the biggest, I guess, flattery signs, I think, of any culture is an outside culture recognizing you wanna be a part of it. Yeah. Right, because if people who weren't a part of it didn't recognize it and like it, then it's really a successful anti-culture, you know what I'm saying? Or you're just a motherfucker, like we were talking about earlier, just saying doing different is for the sake of doing different. But there's no community around it. So to me, well, like you said, I guess the people that's thinking about it, that's a good sign, right? Like there are people who wanna copy this and be a part of this and do these things. But yeah, to the person that is, which is, cause I know we keep saying artist brother is really mainly rappers. I guess rappers and young artists, young artists would be like this, but it's like, it's like now that I've reached a point where it's now, now it's counter, my counter coaches to be a part of this culture I've helped create, you know what I'm saying? Oh, and that does, that does become an issue a lot. Now, I'm just running through conversations I've had in my head and scenarios I've been apart.  But it's like, oh, this was cool when 20 people liked it.  That's like, bro, this is what we work so hard to do. Like imagine the world of, I don't know, it's my mate, Dr. is a little aggressive girl. I did, you know what I'm saying? We should never share that with anybody. You know what I'm saying? We should just keep that to ourselves. And no, we're gonna be broke, but we're gonna be the least shittiest niggas in the whole village. You know what I'm saying? Like this would be crazy, bro.   If you don't and somebody hears about it, it's over in fact. Yeah. No, it's it.  Like you got, you sitting on this billion dollar idea and you don't want to do it because the niggas you built the idea with don't think it's cool anymore. But it's just a group of people who haven't caught on to that yet. No, crazy.  It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. So. Yeah. I don't, I don't know how you balance that artist sentiment with the business sentiment cause it requires a little bit of setting your ego aside to you know, get caught up in that position of it. Yeah. So you can reframe it at least as he has one that shows my influence and two, this is a way for me to capitalize on my own influence versus somebody else doing it. Think it should be easier to make that decision. But, you know, there's some things that are they probably aren't as easy to monetize cause it might not be with a hardware. But let's think about maybe with T-Pain. Remember he did the, he had the auto. The auto thing, right? Right. So the ESO, the auto thing. And this is the thing too. I think there's a third reason that people miss auto stuff. And I've been guilty of this a lot of times throughout my life. And I try to take this into account going forward. A lot of people are enamored with doing something that you might know how to do and you don't see it as a big deal. Oh yeah. Because you know how to do it. Yeah. Right? And for example, T-Pain, well he's like, all I did was use these settings, these settings, these settings, right? So it's not like he didn't do anything amazing at all. But from the user standpoint, you don't even own this. It's already possible to do this. You just need to know how. And what we get caught up in is trying to guard the way to do it by just not telling a lot of people how to do it. Right? So it's like, oh yeah. I got my secret sauce. I got my settings to make my voice sound like this. And I'm just not gonna tell people. All right? Cause then if I told people, they would all do it. They would copy. So I'm less unique and I'm not monetizing off of it. But the alternative perspective that allows you to gain from this is, yes, there is a way to do this currently. However, most people don't wanna go through the work to do that currently. So what you can do is make it easier for them to do it. Everybody's not gonna sit in the DAW and play with all these settings and move the bus around, whatever, whatever. No one wants to do that. No one wants, everybody's like, I'm buying free loops or whatever you're using. So you come up with an app. All I got to do is put my voice in there and it works.  And it does everything that your voice gets done to it when you do it in their full blah recording studio. So sometimes it's that, like, there's things that you feel like I know how to do. I mean, aren't that already are able to be done? But when you popularize a specific way of doing it, you can actually make it easier for people to do it that way. Right, and it's all the way, that's what these sample packs and beat packs are, right? Yeah, right, you don't have to go chopping and digging up the work. Yeah, you don't have to, someone already packaged it for you. So just in packaging alone, there's money and ways of capitalizing, whether you do it from a tech standpoint or whether you do it just from a, hey, I put in the work to organize it for you. All right, some of these books out there that our best sellers are just organizing information. You know what I mean? People buy dictionaries.  I package these words for you in the definitions, right? So sometimes it's just repackaging things and making it easier for people to consume. And I think that's a very obvious thing from a business standpoint. We're like, hey, let me create a course or let me, I don't know, come up with a better way to deliver this food in a faster way, but when it's your own creative innovation, you don't typically think about, well, what's the more convenient way for people to do the exact same thing? And yet again, it's another way to cap. So yeah, man, like, I mean, all of y'all creators out there, but y'all are always doing something that other people would benefit from. It's just about seeing it and how you personally balance that, being in the weeds to actually innovate and then zooming out to see the results of that and how to capitalize on that. I don't know yet for your own, you know, ways of how you do that and process of how you make sure. Maybe that's another person, like a manager or a friend who's constantly been it. Maybe you got your own system, but it's definitely something that is to your benefit, alone, along your journey. Yeah, yeah, got a point. Yeah, man. Let me take a quick second to say, if you're an artist trying to blow your music up or if you're a manager, a music professional in general, trying to help an artist blow their music up, I have something that's a game changer for you and it's completely free. As you may know, we've helped multiple artists go from zero to hundreds of thousands of streams. We've helped multiple artists go from hundreds of thousands to millions of streams, chart on Billboard, GoViral, all of that stuff. And we've now made the way we've branded multiple artists and helped them go viral, completely free step-by-step in Brandman Network. All you have to do is check out brandmannetwork.com. You apply, it's completely free, but the thing is, we're not gonna let everybody in forever. So the faster you apply, the better your chance of getting accepted. Brandmannetwork.com, check it out. Back to the video. Well, switching directions. Got to hear from my guy.  Calling him my guy might give me a shovel. No, he's gonna have him. No, he's my guy, man. It's a dude fighting, man. He's saying a lot of crazy stuff. Oh, God. He laughs. He laughs. Look at the sheet. We're gonna skip. Oh, no, we're not even, no, we're gonna go about, we're gonna go into that later. I forgot, we're gonna save that for another episode.  We're gonna talk about staying in the game. How do you make ends meet staying in music? And somebody who's done this extremely well is Tank. Y'all don't know Tank. He's an R&B artist. He popped in the late 90s, early 2000s. Might've been early 2000s, definitely. But, you know, maybe I deserve was the song that set the world aflame and had a lot of men angry at the time. I wasn't old enough to have... I'll deserve energy. Yeah, I deserve the, I deserve energy. So I didn't feel that same pain, you know what I mean? I didn't have any trial tribulations or wrongdoers that I deserved the karma that he's speaking of. But with that being said, he's been a writer for so many songs. He's been a backup singer for so many songs. And I've always actually loved this about Tank because it's the lack of ego that it seems that he has.  And a lot of artists say, oh, I love music. I just wanna be able to do music if I'll be happy.  And specifically, especially R&B. So why are we talking about him? A lot of people didn't know that he wrote Marcus Jusin's song, Naked, and he did some background vocals. Vocals on that song, Omarion's Oh, which makes so much sense actually. It's very, very tangish when I think about it in so many ways, but apparently he wrote that and he's on the background of that. I've actually seen him talk about this in Aaliyah's, I mean, I see him talk about this in an air view that he was the background vocals for Aaliyah's song, which is crazy because I always thought it was Aaliyah. And it did sound like a woman until I found out I was tank. He was like, oh yeah, that is tank, right? But you just assume because it's Aaliyah. Now this I could play. I'm not playing the other songs, people just because of copyrights, but this is just him singing so I could play this. So for y'all might recognize this Aaliyah song. And that's probably my most famous vocal that I've ever laid. He's like, oh, just sing that.  And that's probably my most famous vocal that I've ever laid. It's crazy. I did think there was a woman singing that, see? That part, it was one. Right, right. But he's just been in the game for so long. He actually came up as a background singer. So that was something he did early on. He was a genuine backup singer before he was a big artist. All right, one of those guys. So that might speak to the lack of ego. He wrote Jerry Fox, Do What It Do, which is one of my favorite songs when I was too young. But that probably to be one of my favorite songs. But again, just back to the point, like all these different songs and someone who has had his own upfront career. But then also being able to play the back and be comfortable just to be around the music, to be in a groove. He did the TGT thing with Tyrese in January. He's wrote a lot of songs. I've seen him be somebody who just helps. A lot of young artists, you'll hear a lot of stories about that. Jamie Foxx is one of those dudes too. Like you'll hear like all these random artists and people would be like, oh yeah, Jamie Foxx like took me in. I used to sleep at his house and like take himself actually. So he was about to go back. I think he's from Virginia or DC area, somewhere over on East Coast, right? He was about to go back because it was a really rough in LA. Some things weren't going like he wanted them to go. And Jamie Foxx was like, yo man, where you going? You can't go back. He's like, what am I going to do if you're gone? We need you.  So he brought him in and it was just like, yo, bro, stay with me, go figure it out, right? And when you see people that move like Jamie and the stories that are around him, see people that move like Tank and the people that are around him, you can tell that for real, again, they just love it. And there is a lot of ways, if you love it, that you can figure out how to make it work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And man, it's a big testament to it is just how much longer you can keep yourself in the game if you aren't afraid to take us about the spotlight and help you get people out. Exactly. There are lots of artists, man, where I think service level, it always looks like, like they are the reason their career is going so strong which, you know, it is in a sense, like it's your work ethic, you made these choices, but the real reason that they're still so successful at moving so much is because of exactly that, how I'm in the back end making moves that my audience might not even know about for another 10, 20 years, you know what I'm saying? But this artist that now goes on to become something or become somebody, never forgets how I did that and that they will still help me in certain positions that help me do certain things that maybe even move my career or you know, as a front-facing artist. Like yeah, I think like it's such a wild artist mentality but I've heard a lot of artists say things like that, they would never help other artists do certain things or working on one stuff and it's like, nah, but you open so many more doors and you become less competitive. That's another big thing, artists are competitive, bro. So sometimes you as an artist may not get help from another artist because they're looking at you as competition. But if you can find a very, you know, low risk way to move yourself in there or it shows like, hey, like, yeah, maybe I'm competition over here but within this realm, I can be of use to you, you know what I'm saying? I can help you do X, Y, Z thing better. That's gonna, unfortunately, open up a lot more doors in a lot of time. You know?   Nah, dead. See, but then you gotta have that talent too. Cause that's true. Yeah.  Right? Everybody doesn't have those multiple talents, but if you do, I mean, one, it's to your own benefit to have multiple talents of the moralistic view of the track. But if you do, you know, don't keep it to yourself, it might paint. Right. Now, of course, personally, you could just keep it all to yourself. Great. But I feel like if you really love music, we would just want to be around it. It doesn't mean you have to disown your own career. But if you think about people who play instruments, it's like, all right, I might not be the one singing at the moment, but I just love playing cause I love music, performing, being able to evolve them, jamming. I've seen Bruno Mars. This is how I knew he used to be big. Like a lot of people think, oh man, this dude is like culture volaturing or like doing the stuff he's doing now just to pop. Right? Cause he's doing more like old school, old to, I mean, you know, I don't even know the years, like what 70s, 50s to 70s like music a lot of times. He played with 80s too, right? But I saw Bruno Mars back in 2010, 1112, where he was beautiful girls. He was that guy, right? And what else did he have that was more him? Cause beautiful girls was a big grenade. Grenade, that was, yeah, he was that guy, right? So it was a little bit past just being beautiful girls, but like that was all so close together, right? He was that guy, but then I will go on YouTube. I became a fan of him because I was just on YouTube. I ran and we came across like this commercial with him and he was like seeing his ass off and he was playing piano and it was like this, it was funny the way he did it. And he sang in like an old school style. So I was like, oh man, this dude could really sing. And then I will see performances with him backstage, not all front of the stage is backstage where he made friends with like freestyling whether it was freestyle rapping or freestyling like playing with some of those old songs and notes and doing that, like all the stuff he's doing now that he was already doing it just for fun. And he brought the back behind the scenes and front of the scenes. Even if you looked at his concerts early on, he would be like, he would always have like his friends and it would be like a good time, like his band and they would like have this relationship. It would be like my backup dancers are there and I don't see them. And they're just a part of like the aesthetic. It would be like this banter back and forth. Like they were like homies, that's what it always felt like. And then they would interact with the crowd and almost feel like skits. So the fun that Bruno Mars emanated on 24 karat magic, you know what I mean? But what was it technically called? 24K gold and like, y'all know what I mean though, right? Like with that fun and that energy he started to emanate and started popping for since then it was already something he was doing.  So when you watch long enough, it's interesting because you can always tell those people who are just like, they love it, love it.   I'm sure I know that. Yeah, he was part of that. He, Bruno's wrote a lot of stuff. He's one of those guys that just be, they just love it, you know what I'm saying? And they write and it kind of just is what it is. So those people are always intrigued me and it's even more intriguing when they also find the visual success because there's a lot of songwriters and people with a lot of scenes who are just around it and love it and whatever.  And that was a big part of the old school artists, blue primer, like let's be involved in everything. Collaborative. Yeah, collaborative, yeah.  I'm gonna go play drums over here. I'm gonna help this artists with this songwriting because, you know, the more stories you get to be a part of, the more shots that kind of shot that, you know? Like I said, like how many of these songwriters that are popular as artists that we know they got their start by giving them a big song to another artist first, you know what I'm saying? And that situation was even the reason that we cared about them or knew about them or maybe it gave them the resources to be able to change their own dreams as an artist, right? So yeah, a lot of doors open up when you don't close yourself off to working with other artists, even if it's sometimes maybe against like the competitive nature in you as an artist, you know what I'm saying? Like sometimes you have to do it because we as consumers are looking for that. Like I think it's cool as a fan to see, you know, other things that my favorite artists have worked on. You like that? Like you said like, man, like this, I didn't know Tank was on that, but it was on, you know what I'm saying? Well, that's cool. You know what I'm saying? Maybe like him a little bit more. Like, man, he was willing to go, bang out, get some pub credits for this little joint, you know what I'm saying? I don't know how much he can pay for that, how many dollars he makes every time that home comes on. But who knows how his pockets or his business situation or even his credibility as an artist, they will look if you never decide to do that, you know? Yeah. So it was a good long-time investment no matter how I tell it in the moment. You know, I'm assuming it felt good because he chose to do it, but long-time it was a good investment because of who she became, you know what I'm saying? And like, and what kind of came from that, so. It stacks up. Yeah. For Yeeks show legend. Yeah. It's like, for real, he's actually one of those guys. Yeah. Yeah, he was like that. He's one of those guys. You tell, love it, been a part of everything. Yeah, he's been a front man, but he's still just comfortable and building other people up and doing sauce. And I thought about him because he talked about those kind of stories. It was like, when he came out, he didn't come out. People revealed that it was like some random like viral post that he was the guy on the SWB job. Oh yeah, this, yeah, yeah. I was like, dang. And it's such a small thing. Yeah. That's the double that you need to be. And that's it.  And now that's like really cool. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's the legend that you did literally, you just said three letters and that was it. And look at the impact that she made for them. True. Exactly, that on a whole other level. So now it just looks like, dang, Brad, look at how many great moments he had part of. Even though he only had a little, I mean, I don't know, he might've technically been a producer on that too, or whenever. I don't know. I know you came up under Teddy Riley and stuff, but like, even if it was literally, he'd just say that one thing.  And then you start to get credit because then it doesn't feel like a coincidence. He's like, dang, the energy must just be right. We use around or something. All right, so I'll be willing to give it up. And I just, I know we're in an age where it's hard to collaborate because people are creative using their role. We're not forced to be in a studio where you're around people and everything. But I don't know, I definitely encourage people to figure out how they can like just share, you know what I mean? And collaborate. Because so much costs from it anyway.  So you got another move in a chamber. There's a lot of stuff that costs from it, but you know, I found that to be an inspiring post. In general, just talking about the moments that he's been a part of.  Yeah, man. It's like someone reach out to you or whatever and like they're really dopey, believe it or not. Well, man, I don't gotta be up in the business.   Yeah, but there are a lot of people in the museum who live a life like that. Literally, bro.  That's what it's like to be. No, I was on a chat with Drake and like Travis Scott dropped his book bag. And I was like, bro, you know how I make book bags drops and like he invested 50 million in mine? He's like, what? Those stories are out there, right? And those, sometimes those stories will be having you punch air for real. Yeah, probably like, damn, man, why was I, I think of book bag straps. Everybody got a book bag. Now, I will know it before we even get to this. I'm a presenter topic. I mean, this ain't on the sheet, y'all. So, since y'all know that. It's been on my mind, man. And I would love to know what everybody thinks. What's the difference between Rick Rubin and DJ Khaled? That's right. Rick Rubin and DJ Khaled? Yeah. See, I feel like, I feel like position-wise, maybe not much, because DJ Khaled also plays like instruments and does actual production, right? I don't know. You play. I saw a video one time with him with a drum pad. I'm assuming he was really using it. Full blown. Man, that could have been for the camera just poking him. That's what's happening. It's crazy because I'm actually making an argument in that direction, but still, I don't know. I doubt it. You know what I'm saying? I'm gonna give him a bit of a doc and say he does. So, you know, they both can do that. And I would have to say on paper, well, service level, not much, but on paper, I think the vibes at brands at the studio sessions are different. Like, I feel like a studio session with Rick Rubin is like candles everywhere, maybe like light snacks, like grapes and mini bottles of water and crackers and things like that. And it's a lot more... Couch. Yeah. Couch somewhere, probably incense playing, maybe like a yoga shaman in the corner. And I feel like DJ Khaled is like the complete opposite. Like it's like wings everywhere, like alcohol, there's a lot of music playing in a different room in the back. You know what I'm saying?  I feel like the vibes are completely different. They bring to bring what they bring out of ours. Here's my thing. And I say this as somebody who has been rocking with and studying Rick for a long time. So, the reason I say this is funny enough, someone who's been an admirer of where Rick Rubin has built for a long time. And I'm talking about going back to early 2000s when I was younger, cause watch the stuff with him and Russell Simmons and documentaries and stuff. Somebody who's been an admirer for that long, I still always have like my independent thinking and way of questioning. So it's like, I've felt this way, but now Rick Rubin has become like hot with a younger crowd, right? Yeah, that part goes, man. That part goes to be him in the field.  And now they're even using him as like cloud points. Like, you know, when it's like a cool person to say that you actually know who that person is or even drop the quote from that person, he's becoming that person, right? Now, at the end of the day, Rick himself be like, I don't really have no talents. I just listen, I just got my ear and I give my opinion. That's what Rick says. That's what he said, man. What's the knock against DJ Khaled? People be like, he'll got no talent. He's been moving stuff together. He just put people together. It's the same thing, right? Which is interesting, because again, like I said, I've admired him and watched Rick for a long time. So this isn't hating for those people who can't understand nuance. This is me trying to question the weird hypocrisy that comes into play because of that. It's like, all right, it's one thing to be like, you just don't like DJ Khaled vibe. You don't like that he be talking and he's loud. You know, his approach is energy, which I can see that type of person who has to light hustle and move in that way. And his background versus Rick's background and how things culminate are completely different. Please don't get it twisted. DJ Khaled didn't have to grind different. If you, so I understand how he can be a turn off, but say it's a turn off because of him, don't diminish what he's created or what he's been a part of because he doesn't have this skill or that skill. When you love this other guy and don't talk about the fact that he doesn't have this skill or that skill. Yeah, yeah.  That's what I call it. Yeah, I was about to say, I think the ironic thing of it is, well not, well, it is kind of ironic. I think Rick Rubin gets a little bit more love because his look and the way he kind of talks about things goes hand in hand with the whole like any movement going on, right? Like be yourself, conform to this. Real philosophize and no shaman type guy approach. And like DJ Khaled, like the surface level represents industry, right?  Like he represents that crowd. What's funny is that, like I said, on paper that's how it looks, but the surface level, they're both the industry person. You know what I'm saying?   So, in that sense, he's really no different. Oh, yeah, I see what you're saying. Like his brand is like down to earth, but. His experience is a nox. He is facing. So he's like saying something from up here, but in a way that makes you here feel here and you think he's here with you, was I know he's thinking about up here. So they both think imagine.  I was like, he probably sick, you know? You think he'll hear about that? I don't think he care about that. I think he do. He's at a point where he can make us think he doesn't care because he has so much of it. It's like, like for real, like for real, and they would be like, I don't really care about the grammar. They'll be like, yeah, for real, of course you don't care at this point. He'll be like, of course at this point, it doesn't make sense for you to care. Yeah. You know, so I think he doesn't, I think him not Kang is authentic because he's already reached that point so many times. You know what I'm saying?     And now you got people thinking that that's what they need to do. Oh, it is like, bro, but the, what happened to 20 years before that? Yeah, so to me, it's the exact same vibe. But like, I think it's that, I think deeper than the server's level of the same person. Server's level is not, you know? And Ruben is the only person in the music industry that can get away with being famous and looking to the show all the time. And I think it's, you know, it's all, yeah, it's part of the brand, right? But he's the only person in the music industry that can get away with not looking clean all the time. It's crazy.  Baby Dora? Boy, in Post Malone, Post Malone gets way way too.  See, I mean that right there. And he live on a ranch, so I know he's feet dirty. That right there might be, you know, there's just other things that come with why that is or why they even, I don't want to go down that route. That's the thing, that'll take us a different direction. But I think it's interesting to observe, right? At the same time. Because if you think about mapping out your own career, all right, the utility of a conversation like that is, these people, generally speaking, have a very similar skill set or what they provide. You can say one's better to you or the other is better to you. That's fine. But with that being in mind, there being a similar skill set, the outcome is completely different. They're both successful, you know what I mean? But the way it looks, the way it feels, and that's when you start thinking about what do I want my brand to be. You know, how do I want to move and what moves are necessary to pattern after to get anywhere in that direction? So I think he's done a good job. And well, both of them done a good job of doing it the way they want to do it. But that conversation, I feel like people need to address the hypocrisy in that to really see it for what it is, what makes them them. And why do you hate one? And why do you love the other? Or why do you love the other one?  Because I feel like with that type of approach, the Rick Rubin approach, hey, people like that are usually assholes, Rick. Now, for me, I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way, but it's like they have like this very peaceful way of like communicating, but then also what comes with that peaceful way of communicating, but strong mindedness that created the work that they have, that perspective calls with strong opinions and ways of doing things. So in some categories, people end up like, oh, wait, I thought this person was all peaceful. He's pretty brash and he's pretty straightforward. So you know that there's something where they're probably like, damn, I don't like this.  But you know, there's some stuff like, yeah, that's bad.   He was kind of like the rebellious rocker kid.  That takes a certain type of mind to be able to do that. Yeah, all right. So I don't know, man. Yeah, I just needed, it's an answer to this bill. My question has been on my heart. And I know where he was going. I ain't got a law. Right, I just, so many people all of a sudden be on that bandwagon and I'm cool with that.  I'm not that, but I'm just like, y'all are just shitting on DJ Khaled so hard, but y'all love this man. And what's the difference? The rollout. He's like Khaled ain't giving us quotables that fit over classical music. He said he's not ready. He's not, not, his quotables fit over like trap music. Like workout music. Yeah, yeah, I can give you that. I can give you that, man. I can give you that. Oh man, let's switch it up, man. Let's get into the science of creating music because designer says he got the sauce for creating hits. Okay. So, you had to give me that, man.  So, let's see what he got. Just the headline, no, it hit me different. Diamond odds. I'm not no joke of an artist. I'll take this thing serious down with the vowels, the a's and out and the u's. I can tell you why songs are hit to a's the biggest vowel that catches the human ear. When I go, a, a, a, a, enjoy it before your ear. When songs like Panda and Gucci gang, what's the vowel that you hear? It's the a. Gucci, Gucci, Gucci gang, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the a. Your ear catches only vowels. Once I understand that, I know how to make things with vowels and learn how to always keep the a included. The a's make sure the g because the g make you go, guh, guh, guh. That's why I say I get a whole lot of money. That is a great science. I never thought about that ever. Notice every song that's number one, we always got the a. Both that yellow, what was that? Oh, what's that? A guh me, if you want it. The u, if you wanted to be dispensive, these is red, bottom, these is bloody shoes. Does it have to be the actual u or does it have to sound like it? I just have to sound in the case of the u. That's how we talk if we didn't have this language. You know what else makes me think about that? I always wanted Nelly. E R, E R, uh oh. Yeah, that's all vowels. Oh, a, b, a, b. Why? I'm a diamond on. All right, Jacour, you just laughed. So I want to know what you were laughing about before we even get into it. Cause it doesn't feel like Charlemagne is talking to him seriously. Feels like, feels like one of the, like a little cousin comes in. They'll look at it like my work for my job.  He's like, I'm a scientist. Yeah, buddy.  Like, where'd you work on that?  That's what it, that's what it felt like. You know what I'm saying? Well, I do feel like he's talking about a real science. And I feel like phonetic science is more than likely a real thing. You know? Yeah.  I would love to know if a lot of the artists out there are paying attention to their music like this, but I can't verify from my experience and many people that I know who have been songwriters basically vouching for this type of thing. Not saying what he just said specifically, but basically talking about, there are certain things that you can do that are going to create earworms. All right. That was one of the earlier terms that I heard where it's like, it sits in your ears like easy to repeat. So some of them chants and things like that, that you might not even like, but it's stuck with you. It's stuck with you. There's ways you can do that purposefully or increase the chances. So I want to read the comments though, before I go into some of the experiences and things I've heard people talk about because it's might be pretty notable. Let me see. Mike Wilmated said, interesting, but I don't know about this one. Produced a couple of hits with no vows. I would love to know what your hits those are because with no vows, it's hard to create a sentence with no vows. Hit with no vows. I feel like that would have been the narrative of the hit. Now what? Click on every reply real quick. Some might, some might, what does it say? Somebody gotta say something. I'm gonna gas it up. You can't speak with no vows. It's not because I was like, what?  Mike Wilmated, I understand. I think there's more than one way to make a hit. Let me see. A song with no vows without vows is impossible, my boy. That's what I'm saying, bro. I mean, that is a real science. If you did, that's magic. Either he was trolling or he wasn't fully comprehending with what I'm saying. And I think more importantly is what he's saying is exaggerating specific vows. All right, because again, it's like, well, every song no matter what that you create is gonna have vows on it, whether you try or not. All right, so I'm sure he really means like the way you focus on those vows and how you place it within the melody. You're making their own sounds and price. Now, what does somebody say? What would a hater say? Hey, bro, how come you don't got no more hits then? Yeah, I don't verse you hits. What's up? Now, to that I say, just because you can make a hit song don't mean it's gonna be a hit. There's a belief that every hit song is a hit. I don't believe that. Because we know that there's other factors. It still has to get to a certain mass of attention. All right, so there's other things that can get in the way, but what I would say is you create the best song and then judging it all things equal when it gets to a certain point, the song with the hit elements, whatever that means will do better than the other song that made it to that same point. All right, because a song can be successful and have hit-like features in terms of how before it was in the market and not necessarily be the songs that we don't know or hit hits, so songs are number one on the charts, but it's different than some of the other songs. They're number one in classics, generation, generation.  So I think deep pay attention to those elements that he's talking about probably improve that because there's a guy I know that is a writer. He's worked a lot in the gospel space back in the day. He wrote for a voice to me in early on, he could all tell me all these stories or ordered this gentleman. And he would tell me even in a church like the science of it all, right? And you can play certain notes to make somebody cry. You already know it's gonna be improved chance, right? You want people to rejoice just certain notes, right? Or you can just, you can just sound manipulative. All right, well, he plays that idea that, you know, it can be used for evil, you know what I'm saying? They call the devil, whether the angel of music or whatever they call it, right? So that's there, right? But knowing that if that's true, then I can't see something like this not having something married to it too. Yeah, there's something like that. I think it's right message, I think just the message is gonna throw people off. Yeah, it's not gonna be people. People got a question. I mean, but look, that's how it is too. What do you think about anything? Anybody who gets really good at it is because they find the science in it. Everything's art, but every art has a science within it and you can flip it. By the verse, they interact. It's hard to have them without the other. Even if you can't see it within, it's always there.  We talked on my trainer about it. Like, part of the way I talk is because I'm a marketer.  I'm like, no, I'm not even trying to say they're bad. I'm just saying, this is what's happening. Cause I would do the same thing. This is just how it goes, right? I see it all differently, but you interact with people who don't have that, like mine and understand how other people's minds can be manipulated and they think, yo, rough, like why are you so scared? Why you gotta be a Debbie Downer?  Babe. I ain't trying to check to see where you on God got. Exactly. Damn, they got me. I was like, and I'd be staring at it. So I'm like, oh, no, I refuse to get God. See what he's doing? Like, oh no, he's trying to give me this deal or I'm at the store and he's like, no, I'm not gonna eat this just because they had the credit. I'll be taking it personally. It was like, no, I want to decide based on my own thoughts.  Like you see it at all times. Yeah, I'll be looking for it, man. And sometimes I allow myself to get God just to learn, just to learn, you know? I'm like, you know what? I know exactly what this is going but I'm gonna do it anyway. That's exact, that's a whole another side of it. You go down to experience, it's like a ride. Yeah, like I'm learning here. If I ride this ride well, I come out the other side with some knowledge if I don't and I spent like 219 or something. It was like, either way, I wouldn't take the risk.  Like I'll try anything, a new song. If I got a new one, I'm trying it. If I go in the guy session, it's like, ooh, try these poor, new, unlimited, skewed those flavors by the package.  Yeah, it's chicken. I'm probably gonna get some gummy worms today, bro. Just, I be trying not to think about candy at all. Cause once it gets there, bro, it'd be hard, man, for me to stay away from it. All right, I might be a player. Yeah, that's a good time to get a little gummy worm on a bad bro. You know, Easter's coming up and this would be the wrong time when they go crazy with the gummy food. You can't be, you know what I'm saying? The Easter starburst should be coming out pretty soon. Yeah. Saying, oh look, I'll say. You know the game too well. Never, what? Y'all know what seasons they drop with candies. Bro, you were, you were. Like spring time, they go hard on the fruit candies, but I'm guessing cause it's the summer, spring day, you know? But the fruit candies be up at this point. You got that strong sweet tooth, man? No, not crazy, but I just know. Yeah.  Oh, yeah. I might be a candy maybe like, maybe like twice a month. Once every 15 days, I bet. Interesting that you know it though.  Oh yeah, no, I was younger, yeah, it was bad. You know what I'm saying?  I got up when I ain't playing on that stream. You know what I'm saying? I'm more of like a, like a savory guy. So I like pastries and stuff more than candy. You can't be like a savory.  You know what I'm saying? Oh, the biscuit, the biscuit gonna hit different. You know what I'm saying? So I ain't completely removed. I just chosen my poison. This is a whole another food conversation. I'ma, I'ma get this last topic out the way cause we about to go real deep in food, but I got another wingspot, man. Oh, sure. They, okay, I'll bring it out, I suppose. I wasn't looking, but it found me. It's part of my problem. All right, let's play this last clip. Every popular song sounds the same. Here's why. That's the title of this video. We'll put it in the link in the description, but there's a specific segment of this video that we want you guys to hear. Check this out. Scientists have studied 464,000 songs and found that both melodies and sounds of instruments are becoming much more similar. Songs are also becoming shorter because of this and streaming platforms are prioritizing those shorter songs mainly because shorter songs are less likely to be skipped. And even if we disregard the studies that I just mentioned, you don't really need one to see that the majority of popular music is painfully similar in its respective genres. I believe a lot of this is due to the fact that when record labels gain back their influence after briefly losing it, they began developing technology that would make them even better at promoting generic popular music. And from a business standpoint, it makes sense that a label would want to put out safe music. Music that they know people will like. In the past two decades, labels have even acquired technology that they can use to analyze music and predict what songs will be hits. They can use services such as Hitpredictor or Shazam to see what songs will blow up. Apparently Hitpredictor was able to predict 48 out of the top 50 radio hits in 2013. There are actually even entire companies such as Nex Big Sound, which are dedicated to analyzing music and finding the Nex Big Sound. Previously, executives at record labels would just make these decisions based on their gut, but now they can rely on this data. And you're probably thinking that if labels keep pumping out this generic music, people will eventually get tired of it. And while that may be true for some people, science says it actually isn't for the majority. In a study done by Columbia University in 2006, they showed some people music websites with a bunch of songs and told them to download their favorites. Some sites had rankings of the most popular songs and some didn't. It showed that people who saw the rankings were more likely to download the popular songs. They then did a second experiment where they did the same thing, but this time they sent out websites with the actual download statistics and then some websites with fake download statistics. The experiment proved again that believing that a song is more popular made people, oops, made people more likely to download it. Another study done in 2011 shows that the brain produces dopamine when people hear songs that they have played and heard before. So essentially what this all means is that a label can have teams of people working on making a boring song. They can put the song onto the streaming services and manipulate it so it gets more popular.  And for all those reasons, that's all it takes. Hurry and take that information and go get rich people. He says some shit, man. Man, he saw something hitting you, man. You know, with the whole dopamine release when people hear familiar music. And that makes me think of, you know, it's one of those things where like Aria's made and noticed it. Like why are all these, all these audio files, all these songs sound the same, but then like the general consumer isn't thinking about that.  So I should like this one, you know, man. Let's keep this vibe going. So I agree, man. I agree. I agree with everything you said. Well, first of all, shout out to Maddie Balls. I really don't know you like that, but I love this video that I got put onto you by keep all creating and creating stuff like this. So y'all can check him out on YouTube, but that's a couple of things here. One, he talked about the idea of people downloading from the music, it may more likely to download music based on already having streams, right? Or interaction, social proof, right? We already know this and it works. And many people are here to add again and think, well, oh man, people just wanna listen to what's popular and they don't have any taste. Nobody cares about underground artists versus big artists. I implore you guys, go past the service level. Not just about that. I know that's always the first thought and way to go, but typically the bitter thought is in the actual answer. Right? That thought that makes you bitter like, oh man, they just don't appreciate. That's usually more your personal feelings and ego versus the actual answer. Yeah. Like when it really comes down to, cause you can't use that, like you can't actually utilize that and you're not in control. What puts you in control is realizing what it comes down to and that comes down to, convenience, saving time. How many times can I talk about the fact that we're here with so much information time and time again and we're just trying to figure out how to make the best decisions for our lives possible. That's it. Everybody is like, what's the best person to date? What's the best school to go to? What's the best job to work? How could I make more money faster and do it at the most risk, right? For entertainment, how can I watch the best movie that I'm gonna enjoy instead of wasting my time and how can I spend as little time possible? Listen to it. I've been looking for it. Ask the friend. Look at what?  And streams, they're like reviews. You just assume because it's been listened to that other people must like it. So it must not be trash completely, which means I'm not gonna waste my time by giving it a chance, right? Because if I listen to something with zero, I don't know, that's a risk. And it is a risk. Even as who are in this and we're always looking for new artists and stuff to hear. You go on to a smaller artist profile, but hey, his top song has 10,000 streams. The rest of the songs have 200.  Just what the people saw here. Yeah, let me see what they saw in this one versus the other, right? So it's a natural thing for us to do. It's a natural thing to say, you know what? I want Amazon, let me buy this product that has 3,000 reviews versus that seller with the product that has zero reviews. I found kind of risky, even if I could get it returned because Amazon is pretty decent with returns. I'm gonna have to buy it and be disappointed and send it back, all right? It's just a risk, that's all it is. So we have to like, just continuously come to grips with it. We're all doing that same thing in many spaces and places. And the only way to opt out of that is to be consciously working against it and nobody's gonna be doing that 24-7. Even the underground artists themselves are still doing that. Like I said, you could be looking at your favorite artists, and be like, dang, this is the new album. This song has a lot of stats. You might have time, but let me just hear one real quick to kind of get a pulse of what the rest of it's like. This is the one that has all the views, so let me check that one out, right? So look, it is what it is on that side. And then he made another statement. Talk about songs getting shorter. Which is another thing, improving the lightness for the V-List and II, which helps boost the algorithm, which of course, all the music gets more weariness and leads to it being a hit. That was another one, but it was the other thing that you addressed two days you talked about at the end. When you said, sciences show that we get a dopamine hit when we hear songs we heard before. There it is, right? What do you think that comes from? Why do you think that is? I think that people are lazy, and we like to enjoy things that haven't been enjoyable to us before, because sometimes learning that to figure out something else is enjoyable for you is work and a risk, like you said, right? So I could take the risk, maybe I like this new sound, maybe I don't, or I can just lean really heavy towards the thing that I know I already enjoy and I already like. Most people are gonna pick that one, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So that's what I was thinking, just like, we heard it, we like it, we know we like it, I wanna hear more of this. I could see that from two perspective.  And I might not like it, great. We're constantly working to not pay attention. So as a quick aside, do you know why time seems to move faster when we're adults than it does when we're children? Because we pay more attention to it? We pay less attention. To time? When we get older, yeah. I feel like I pay more attention to time, let's go. We pay more attention to time, but that actually proves the point further because when you're paying more attention to time, time would actually move slower, right? It's because we're not paying as much attention because we've seen so many things and information is so accustomed to, we just move and because we're constantly trying to figure out how can I make less decisions so we fall into these habits, right? Already know what I'm gonna put on, I don't have to think about brushing my teeth, right? I don't have to think about all these different things so we make decisions ahead of time as we build these habits, that's all it basically is, right, so we use less energy. And we're more aware of the world and the environment. Kids, everything is new. So you're paying a whole lot of attention to everything and you're consuming and then you're being stimulated and when you're paying attention to something, time moves slower. So if you think about, you probably haven't done this since you were a kid, but this is a clear example of how, no, if you pay attention to time and move slower, when you wait for your motherfucking class to be over and you just keep looking back at the clock. Oh, yeah.  Right? Like, we all been there in school, we've been there and working. It's our places and times of life, right? Time moves slower when you're paying attention to a thing, it moves slower when you focus on it. But as an adult, to prove that same point about new experiences, when you go on vacation and extended vacation, you have all these new experiences and you're in a new place, it feels like you go into this time warp, right? And then you go back to your same world pace and then things move like fast again because you're already accustomed to it. You're not getting all these new experiences so the days don't feel as long. So with that in mind, right? What was that last place again? I was- Oh, the dopamine. The dopamine, right. Yeah, the dopamine, right, yup. So all that stuff, it relates because like nostalgia is a very, very real thing for us, right? New experiences is also a very real thing. However, new experiences take more time and energy. And when you're moving at your pace, often times, unless you're deciding I need to vacate or set aside time, we're just looking for the thing that takes less energy. So I would love to get a nostalgia kit because I've already decided I like this, I already have an environment and this entire experience that came along with it so I can get that same feeling without having to go through the inconvenience of experiencing that again. It's like I get the experience without the investment. Yeah. That's all the nostalgia is. Yeah, all the gold without the risk. I get all the gold without the risk. So yeah, I'm back in that environment when I was listening to this song and I was at that party without having to go to the party. Without having to have the risk of somebody pulling out a gun at any moment and me having to look at the wall. You know what I'm saying? That's all the nostalgia is but that's one of the primary like attractions to nostalgia. You get the benefits without the risk or without the investment. So I was getting that dopamine rush to me is no surprise when you do that with these songs. All right, but I think there's a good and bad to that obviously because it's one thing when we're talking about nostalgia something you genuinely decided that you love, right? Or something that you already decided that you liked and now it's like, oh man, good, I already liked this. I'm happy that it's on, I'm hearing it. But what about the stuff that you've heard? Not because you liked it. You heard it because you heard it.  What do you do then? It's like now I like it more because I heard it. Again, even though I didn't really like it to start with, I've had songs like that. That's the game, bro. That's the game, even as a marketer. I know there's songs that I liked the more the more I heard them and there's some that like legitimately, oh, I just, I was just slipping. I really didn't give it to do with the attention that I should have. But there's a lot of songs that I like or I grew more fondness of because I heard it more times and then eventually, especially it became nostalgic.  So damn, this song now almost kind of feels like a good song. It's a different way into somebody's psyche.  No, wait, were it one of their songs? No, well, yes, Ryan Leslie's song. So that was how he got signed. Diddy, somebody who knows music, obviously, has been a part of creating some real good music. Ryan Leslie, I think he knew Diddy's DJ, right? So everywhere Diddy would go, he would get his song playing. Oh, okay. And Diddy heard it so much, eventually he's like, who is this guy? Yeah. Because to him, it now feels like this song is everywhere.  So why does everybody keep playing this song? It must be some kind of hit or something that's on the charts right now. And who is this guy? Eventually, you know, him and Ryan link up and he buys out who it is and then he gets signed to Diddy and Diddy takes it. What? Man, but that was a plot twist. Great, I feel like great story. You know what I'm saying? Great lesson in there somewhere. Probably a couple of lessons in there somewhere. Honestly, I was like, but probably shot out to the DJ, I guess, shot out to the DJ. I didn't make that story up. And that's just that's just the word on the street and from from people involved. But anyway, we're going to end it right there. This episode of a 38, I mean, no labels. That's the story. I'll bring that shot. I'll cover it. And we out. Peace.


Good to see you here as we take up to the first pitch on Fox with the Hall of Famer, the big hurt Frank Thomas, CC, Sebastian Yankees, great six time all-stars here starting off the show. There you go. There you go. He's famous. Actually, right Alex Rodriguez is here and I'm Kevin Burkhardt, so glad you're with us tonight. And a fun start with CC, you've been here six times, but this is kind of a cool moment for you. You already said this would be your last season. Obviously you're trying to win a championship with the Anks, but Alex Cora, your rival manager with the Red Sox, placed a call to you a couple months ago, saying, hey, what do you think about coming as an ambassador? Tell me about that. Yeah, you know, Alex and I, we played together in 2005, so he was a teammate, a former teammate of mine, and you know, he called me and said, would you be open to coming to the off start game? And I was like, yeah, of course, it's in Cleveland and it's been an awesome experience.  It's been humbling and a big blessing. CeCe, you never thought you'd be in a foxtail with a guy in pinstrips, it was actually bigger than you. There we go.  It wasn't about the eating contest. That's easy, man. You can eat, anybody can make a pizza. You got to come up with something better than that, man. This show is great. Don't stick together with him. He's a white talker. CeCe, I know this year has been such an awesome year for you.  You said you're leaving and you're not coming back. What has been the highlight for this year for you? I know how much you've enjoyed it. Just being around the guys, just kind of hanging out with the guys, winning games, having the chance to win the division, setting the stuff up to win the championship and just enjoying the experiences, going to London, being able to come here to the All-Star Game. Everything's been great and just been a fun experience and I'm having a lot of fun. For me, it's congratulations coming back because I've faced you enough for this fan crowd here and they love you. That affection for you has been unbelievable here. Congratulations coming back. Any question? Are you really going to retire? I'm done, man. You're not going to pull up Michael Jordan? I can't. My knee won't let me do it. We're going to miss you, buddy. What are you looking forward to in this game? Is there a one star, one player that you want to go see? All of them. I'm looking forward to seeing GT. I want to see DJ do his thing. I got a chance to meet Trevor's story last night. That was pretty cool. Just being back here in this atmosphere and getting to meet these guys and knowing what it's like to be an All-Star again is really cool and getting these relationships fun. What do you think about Runner coming in June? Did you see him last night in this home run derby?   I've never seen that. He was just hitting it where it was pitched. Just raw power. That was fun to see that display. It was kind of like he got bored of yanking balls. It's like, all right, let me just play a couple to right. That was crazy. I spent some time with Christian Yelich. I'm so impressed by him. He's tall. He's the fastest guy on the team. He's got 30 home runs. Very underrated. I cannot wait to see him in this stage. If I'm going to pick one, I'm with Cece. I want to see everybody. I love watching Nolan Aronato play. I just want to see something at third base that he does something crazy and throws. He's amazing at third base. So I'm looking forward to seeing what he could do out there. Cece, I'm curious when you come to it, you've been here many times. You know a lot of these guys, but what kind of things do you talk about? Do you talk about the experience? Do you share secrets? Tell me about some of the conversations you have. You talk about it all. You share secrets with some of the guys that you know and that you trust, some of the guys that you're friends with, you make relationships with other guys that you may not have talked to before.  See, real quick, honestly, who are the Yankees? Who are we trading for? You're the one that got casted on the line, man. I'm not privy to that information yet. Not at the U.S. they switch. Yeah, switch with no. Oh my goodness. Cease, you see about the other great Yankee and he's going to sign a contract with Fox to broadcast in about seven minutes. Great seeing you, man.


Simple rule. If you control the keys, it's your Bitcoin. If you don't control the keys, it's not your Bitcoin.   Here's the problem. A lot of people have no idea how to even start to decide if they actually control the keys. Let me ask you a question.  I'm counting myself here. Very good. How many people do not control their Bitcoin, but have it in an online account, where somebody else is controlling the Bitcoin? Don't be shy. It's okay. We all started there. More importantly, how many people have no idea how to answer that question? You don't know if you control it, right? Let me give you some advice. If you are running a wallet, each time you do a transaction, it generates a new address. But when you started using that wallet and told you something like, write down these 12 words, or these 24 words, and keep them as a backup, those words, they generate all your keys. The reason you have to write them as a backup is because you are controlling those keys, and if you lose those words, you lose the keys, you lose the Bitcoin. With great power comes great responsibility. If you have a wallet in which you are asked to write down the backup, you control the keys. If you didn't write down the backup, when you go home tonight, it would be a good time to open the sentence, go to backup, and write down those damn 12 words before you lose your phone or drop it in the toilet, because you were trying to text while in the bathroom. We all knew it. When you dropped it in the toilet and your Bitcoin disappeared because your phone blew up, and then what? You called the Bitcoin help desk. There's no Bitcoin help desk. You go and write it, and you go, I lost my keys. Can someone help me? And what are people going to say? Did you write down the 12 words? You didn't? Sorry for your loss. How do you know how to do a backup and how to control your own? A lot of people don't know how to start, so I'm going to give you a quick tutorial on how to control your own keys. First of all, what is the most secure device you own? Not your laptop. Definitely not your laptop. How many here have Windows? My sincere condolences. Okay, so you don't own your Windows machines. Your Windows machines are owned by a combination of viruses and torsions that are controlled by Russian and Chinese hackers somewhere else in the world, but they're not really your machines. They just let you use them occasionally. Do not put Bitcoin on those devices. That's like making a donation to hackers. They have software actively looking for Bitcoin software, and when they find it, they take it. When they put a key warmer, they wait for you to do a transaction and enter your password, and then they take it. Okay, the most secure device you own is your smartphone. Yes, Android, iOS is the most secure device you own. Operating systems on smartphones are far, far more secure than laptops and desktops, especially Windows. So your smartphone is probably the best place to run a wallet. If you have a lot of money invested in cryptocurrencies or own a lot of Bitcoin, and the word a lot means different things to different people, but if you feel like it's a lot, right now I told you, your Bitcoin has just been stolen. Do you go, ah, I'll get some more? Or do you start crying? Or do you have to have a very difficult conversation with your parents and your spouse about why your kids won't be going to college? So those are variations in the word a lot of crypto. If you have a lot of crypto more than you would be upset to lose, you should buy a hardware wallet. A hardware wallet is a USB device. I can recommend a couple of those. Ledger, Trezor, those are really good.  They're a bit difficult to buy right now because apparently about a million people noticed that the Bitcoin price went up and decided to finally join this thing, and then it all went out and tried to buy a hardware wallet, so they're out of stock. That's a good problem to have. But a hardware wallet is this little USB device which keeps your Bitcoin keys on a highly secure, special purpose device. Even if your computer is absolutely full of viruses and hackers, you can use that device securely because everything happens on the device, and the device itself can't be attacked over USB. It's almost impossible. So buy a hardware wallet. If you can't buy a hardware wallet, download software onto your smartphone. If you have iOS, I could recommend bread wallet, or mycelium, or copay, or AirBits. If you have an Android wallet, mycelium, or copay, or AirBits. I don't work for any of these companies. I haven't taken money from any of these companies. They're just ones that I've used. They've been around for a while. I trust them to be much better than whatever else you're doing right now. Download those wallets, install them on your smartphone, then when it tells you to make a backup of your 12 to 24 English words, don't get smart, don't get fancy, don't say, well, I'll write three of the words here, and then I'll take the other three words, reverse them, put them in my phone book, hide them in my library, give them to my cop, don't get fancy. Paper, pencil, write down the 12 to 24 words. The chances that someone is going to get a hold of that and know what it is, pretty slick. Put it in a drawer, lock it, put it in a safe, lock it.  If you lose the words, you have your phone. Both are equivalent. Anytime you want, restore from those words, all of your transactions, all of your money, you get back. Now you control your cryptocurrency. These wallets, many of them, JAX is another one. If you have multiple currencies, not just Bitcoin, if you have Ether, Dash, Monero, Zcash, LTC, whatever, JAX, JAXX. Exodus? Never heard of it. I don't know if it's a... That doesn't mean it's not good. I'm just saying I haven't personally heard of it. Okay, so down on one of those wallets, write down the phrases, pencil on paper. Right? If our civilization ended tomorrow, in one month, two months, all of the CDs, DVDs, hard drives, USB drives would be dust. Okay, maybe not three months, but 3,000 years? Dust. We're still finding paper from the Egyptians. Paper lasts. Yes, paper. Don't put it on a USB drive. Paper. Simple. Acid for a paper will last for hundreds of years. If you're extra paranoid, you eliminate it so that it cannot get destroyed by water. You buy a very inexpensive, fireproof safe from your office store. You put it inside so it can't be burned. Flood, fire, theft, covered. Now, on that kind of system of wallets, hardware wallets with your backup words, you can store, I know people who store millions of dollars. I'm not joking, on exactly that kind of system. Once you have control of your Bitcoin, it doesn't matter if there's a fork. It doesn't matter if your exchange decides to go one way or another. It doesn't matter. You should not be keeping your money on an exchange. You should not be keeping your money and trust someone else to keep it safe for you. That's just a bank, and part of the reason we're doing this open blockchain is because we don't trust banks.