According to the data from Nelson, Drake accumulated just under 16.5 billion global streams in 2022 and 75% of those streams came from his catalog. Not his new album. And this is when we get into the business. What's up? What's up? What's up? I'm Brain Man, Sean. I'm Corey. We are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. You can catch us every Tuesday, every Thursday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, wherever you stream your podcast here at the intersection of creativity and currency. Now, as you guys know, we love to break down case studies in the music industry, whether it's marketing, the business side. And today we got to break down one of the more prolific artists of our generation, Drake. And for those of y'all who care about the business, who aren't just looking for random tips because y'all are thinkers and y'all listen and apply these to y'all lives to get to y'alls back. This is going to be a great podcast. All right. So for y'all who just want the tips, keep moving, click off. For those who are actually moving in the music business and want to make career decisions, we got a lot of great information for y'all because this guy, Nathan McCartney, shout out to you. He writes for a publication, which I think is his own, called The Bag. And he did a great article where he presented a business review of Drake's business decisions over the years. We're not going to go over all of it. We'll link the article below. But there's some really strong points. Where starting off the gate, I want to start with the fact that 77 out of the 256 songs that Drake has commercially released on his projects are certified platinum. 77 out of 256. Yes. What's that like? 30%, 34%. 30%.  But yeah, 30% of the songs he drops that go on platinum. That's crazy. That's a one in three chance to go on platinum. That's kind of crazy. That is crazy. So you know, a Drake feature must be nice. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Now we are making that kind of money because that batting average is pretty ridiculous as stated in the article. And you already know there's going to be some success that comes because let's imagine that's the primary how many of these are going to at least go even bigger. If you know that level of success is there, once an artist gets to that level of escaping the game and just trying to get some validation, they can think a lot more about the business. And we don't focus enough on the business decisions and how artists like him are moving so then artists can start to see options for themselves. And that's really what I want to get into in this conversation because it was reported that Drake had passed 75 billion streams on Spotify alone earlier this year back in February for various credits. He's been on obviously this isn't just his primary songs. These also do include features. 75 billion streams equates to $225 million on the low end. Set $225 million off of just streams. That's a crazy number. But here's the more important part for me. It says with all of those streams in mind, according to the data from Nelson, Drake accumulated just under 16.5 billion global streams in 2022 and 75% of those streams came from his catalog, not his new albums. And this is when we get into the business. So let's just stop here and think about the economy we're in. So artists are not only competing with the new artists and everything that's popping out. You're competing with old artists because people can listen to old music and you're competing with your old self. Sometimes people will prefer. And when people say, hey, if you want to owe me, they really can just go get to owe you and not stream any of your new stuff. And when you understand this though and really look at these numbers, that puts you in a completely different point of leverage. Because if I know that, yes, I'm going to find some new wins to keep myself relevant with this new music, but most of the business is being done on the back end, then you start thinking differently. And Drake had a comment where he said that he believes artists should actually get milestone bonuses when they do certain things on streaming. And the same way NBA players, my, oh, if I was an MVP that year, I get a bonus. If I won a championship that year, if I'm scoring champion this year, or even just score a certain amount of points, I get a bonus. Like, oh, if I get two billion streams, 10 billion streams, there should be bonuses associated with that over time. Because it also keeps them hungry. It incentivizes them not just for that individual song, but to keep adding to the catalog. What do you think about that point before we go any deeper? Now, I agree. I think it gives them a reason to keep pushing traffic to your platform, you know what I'm saying? Because if I know that, oh, if I get to your point, if I could hit 10 billion streams on Spotify and I get XYZ certification, I get XYZ bonus, I'm incentivized to push my fans to Spotify. I mean, even looking at this, man, if he got, let's just say out of 10 billion, like eight billion of it from there alone, man, that's, I can't even think of the math on that ad revenue, but that's probably at least a couple of hundred million, you know what I'm saying? He's making a couple of hundred million.  You know what I'm saying? Like, those are things that are hard to quantify, but you know are happening because of the numbers or the milestones that him and other artists that are hitting that achieve and the press that comes from it. Because if you think about it, man, it's really only like four of them that do those type of numbers. It's him, a bad bunny, a tell-it-swift. So it's like, how often do you as a Spotify or Apple get to even like, run that type of narrative, show that that's even possible? You know what I'm saying? So I do agree, like when it's hit, we shall all be celebrating this win, you know. That's true. Because it's probably not going to happen again for a long time. I like that idea. It's the pyramid advertising. No one most will never achieve it, but I can show as possible and do a couple of artists, right? And this is available to all artists. Look at what Drake did. But how few will actually get there. I mean, you know, that's obviously the the skeptic and cynical view I look at it from the labels and the companies, but it is, it just makes sense though. For there to be some level of incentive because it is good for all. Keeps the artists on your side, allows you to show proof of concept. Keeps you in the news. Keeps you in the news. Yeah, all that. I love that actually. Then also, so they fight that and bring up that Justin Bieber future. Dr. Dre, I mean Bruce Brinkstein, there's been so many people that sold off catalogs, right? Tiger, which many people were surprised about when that news first came out because it was like 70, 78 million, something like that. I got to interrupt this video real quick to let the artists and managers who are looking to grow know that I have a major announcement because as many of you know, we're bringing out J.R. McKee, who is responsible for selling over 160 million records literally, along with us, right? We want to meet artists in person. However, many of you guys said, I can't make it to that event, Brandon. I really want to make it. And I know that the information is going to be great because I got to see the growth from artists who went last time. Great. Well, we finally broke down and decided to allow artists to get access to a replay 30 days after the event. However, you have to buy your ticket to the event before the event. We're not going to give anybody access to the event or the ability to submit their music for us to listen to if they don't purchase their ticket before the event, before it sells out. As many of y'all know already, there's only 100 tickets available. So you will have the ability to get your music listened to be considered to have a free one-on-one call with me, J.R. McKee, and Jacory also be shared on our social media platforms amounting to over 200,000 followers and be put in front of our record label distributor and manager friends, the people who can help you grow. And if they want to reach out, we'll help facilitate that. So that's the quick announcement. October 15th, www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash DC will put the link in the description on YouTube. If you want your music considered, if you want to see this exclusive event that we're only showing in a private space, never putting out this information publicly online, go ahead and grab it before they're sold out. Peace. But Drake did something different, which I wasn't aware of this. So they said that after a little digging, it shows that Aubrey transfer the copyrights of his catalog to 23 Capital. 23 Capital is ran by a guy named Jason Chobb and is traditionally known for financing the transfers of European soccer players. And this is when he gets into his theory and I think it's pretty valid. Well, I don't know this to be a fact. I think that Graham, Drake, I'll just replace Drake. I'm going to say Drake all these times. I think that Drake pulled off another smart business move. If you're 36 years old and your catalog continues to be where the lion's share of your consumption comes from, 75% in Drake's case, don't sell it unless you need to. You're young and you still got a lot of building to do. You can increase the value. My guess is that he received a large sum of money that is paid off by the residuals from his catalog with some interest, but that he still owns ownership in his body of work. So what does that sound like? It sounds like he got some kind of advance, possibly. Instead of selling the ownership, I'm going to, what word am I looking for? Ah, refinanced. That's the word I'm looking for. It's almost like refinancing your own streaming in some, so to speak. It doesn't add up exactly, but yeah, I'm going to sell a portion of it and I'm going to just keep using it as a pull of capital to borrow against and then use that capital to pay for itself instead of selling out the ownership. That's actually a beautiful thing. Yeah, and it's smart because it's like, I know I'm going to make this money back as I can see it. So like, what do I have? What do I really have to lose in this situation versus doing it through a label who is going to, to the point of the article, want ownership of it? Because most of these investment firms don't really want ownership of the thing. They just want that money back and more. So yeah, I think it's smart. Yeah, I think that's something for artists to think about. Like, even if your numbers aren't doing Drake, Drake numbers, maybe you don't need as much money as Drake needs to borrow either, right? Or to exchange because it's not even, well, no, it is borrowing because if he's paying back money, so again, I want to say this concept is like, hey, I know my streaming is making a million dollars a month. Let's keep the numbers small and simple. If I know they're making a million dollars a month, I might use that leverage of bringing in a million dollars a month to then borrow 10 million dollars, let's say. Knowing I'm going to make that back in a year, I should be able to get that approved. And then with that 10 million dollars, I'll probably pay back a little bit more than that based on how the deal is set up. But I'm only going to use the money that my money is already bringing to me to pay it back. So one, I could pay it back. Maybe I pay 12 million dollars back. I paid some more money, but I paid it back in a year and I still own my music. And next year, I'm going to make another 12 million dollars off my catalog. Thinking like that, the financial engineering of all that is just something I feel like, again, artists should be aware of because we hear so many things about deals, but people fail to realize how creative and how differently you can work a deal. You just need to know who to talk to. Even on a smaller level, we just had an Adrian episode, right, that we dropped. And it wasn't necessarily a deal, but he had his financing together. He had his credit together. He'd have having those six credit cards and he was able to think, yo, I know based on the pace of my streams, I am going to make probably 22K off of the song this year, minimum based off of this pace. Instead of going with these distros who want to take ownership of my stuff and split profit share, inappropriate perpetuity, or even if they just want to split the profit and perpetuity, I could literally just borrow with my credit cards. So not borrowing from a bank in the traditional, I'm going to go sign and get a small business loan. Literally, I'm just going to run up the numbers of my credit cards, $10,000. And in three months, I know I'm going to make this $10,000 back, pay it. And I don't got to deal with nobody. I own 100% of all this. Yeah. I feel like that's the bigger side of it is creative financing. That's all it is. We talk about the label setup, I know the label side of financing. Financing is what Ari is used to, but I mean, even the article said, man, like Jason Trout's company is typically investing in soccer players. You know what I'm saying? Like that's his bag. We've seen other deals with people of, I mean, we've even had clients who's had investors that were like on fishing companies and just like the most random things, man. Like, Ari, you would be surprised at who wants to get into the music industry. Yes. You know what I'm saying? Yes. Like who looks at you as a vehicle into music? And then the number of tech nine, his investor and business partner that the OG who started all with him and got his business going to another level had like a furniture store or something. I know that. That's where he made his like millions that he had made at the time. That's what I'm saying. And we always make the joke about everybody wanting to get into music as an artist. But now there are some people out there who just wanted like a foot in it. They don't care how they're getting it. Can I give you some money? Can I can I buy your equipment? Investor XYZ Avenue and though there are more of those people out there than there are labels, you know what I'm saying? Way more, you know what I'm saying? And then as you can kind of see with this Drake situation, you know, we don't know all the terms of the agreement, but they're usually way more fair because like I said, whereas like labels and distributors and things that that typically want a certain portion of ownership for a certain length of time, most of these like independent investors just want their money back, plus interest. Like you said, if I give you 10 million, give me 12 million back in the opportunity to do business with you again. And I'm happy. You know what I'm saying? We're good. You know what I'm saying? We're good as far as I'm concerned. And that's what's great. That's what's great about it. Yeah. No, that's, bro, it's so big. And again, I know people might hear these numbers that they oh, well, Drake is Drake or an Adrian situation.  We're not advising anybody to do any of these things in particular. What we're advising is thinking. And I think that's what people miss. Right? So I'll make a quick comment about one of the guys who, well, not one of like multiple people. Sometimes when we talk about like shorting videos or things like that, instead of doing a conversational style like this, straight up, I know when we were making our conversational videos, therefore a certain type of person who's probably going to learn and apply. Like they're thinking they're strategizing on a whole another level because you can't get that in tips videos.  Tell me what to do. And then the reality is everything we say doesn't plug and play into what your life is. We don't know you. We're just having a conversation here. We can talk about what's working for a lot of people or what's worked for some of our clients in a moment, but it doesn't mean it's going to work for you exactly. So we always try to advocate for you to think.  Or did you Corey told me this?  Yeah, yeah, best believe we will lead you in the best direction we can or a rabbit hole that you should explore and then make the decision for yourself based on what you find out, why you explore that rabbit hole. You know what I mean? But just because I said I found me some, you know, a nice set of shirts and bro, they had a whole bunch of larges. When I was there, when you go, they might be out of larges. The word might have already got out. So it's not for you. Whatever happened to market change. So I just want to say that because, again, the Adrian deal, the Drake deal is not about what they did specifically. It's about the thought of you being more creative in how you approach these deals because the label infrastructure gets people thinking that this is how it deals with it. This is the only way, man. It's just context. All we can do is give you context. Whatever you do with that context and the information is up to you. We have talked about it before, man. Y'all as the audience have to stop looking for reasons to blame the content creators that you're watching when most of them are just giving you information to make your own decisions. See what I'm saying? Nobody wants to make their own decision anymore, man. I see a lot of them don't position it that way. A lot of these content creators don't be doing that, though. They really use it. Well, you're right. We give information, you know what I'm saying?  Right. Because I've learned a lot of artists want you to think for them so they can have somebody to blame and I'm not going to give you all the satisfaction. That is a fact. It's a fact. And that's why we started the podcast with Civic Episodes. Again, I'm scratching my mic. That's probably going to be bad on the audio. But that's why we, the pod-specific episodes are for those people where we are, the type of artists that we talk to and they give us commentary on the podcast episodes, we know it's different than the ones who watch the other episodes. It's not that there's no, never any overlap, but it's usually the ones who, you know, they're more thoughtful, they're more strategic. And year over year we see a little bit more growth in their careers, you know what I mean? Yeah. So with that being said, another gem that I think all of y'all would appreciate, particularly the pod-lovers is drakerelated.com. Oh, that's the merch zone? Yeah. Yeah, this one is crazy. Yeah. So he did a partnership with Spotify and if you go to Drake's website drakerelated.com, you'll be able to see he has all types of items and it's listed in the room. EJ, if you could put this on the video. He wrote a book? Yeah. What? Yep. He has a book, titles ruin everything, a stream of consciousness by Drake and Kinza Samir. And this is the cool part about it. What did you just hear Jacory say? He said he wrote a book. This is literally a way that people can discover what to buy from Drake. I just don't understand how as much as I stay on the internet, I never saw that. Again, we know, I learned this from just what we do. No matter what and how much we talk about some things, there will always be somebody who doesn't know. Yeah, facts. All right. That's facts. That's true. Like you just can't get all of your fan base to know because of the algorithms not showing it to everybody. People are busy. Everybody's not going to open every email. All that great stuff. So the way he has this website set up, right? It's a studio. This is the last but lack of better words. And again, we'll show a little bit of the picture on screen and you can go and you can just click random items. And our defective garment hoodie, $170. But it looks like that's official with Nike. Is that a Nike check on it? Yeah, it is a Nike check. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's a little hard though. I can't even laugh. It is. It is. Nice little. You can go check out all the albums. Like literally this is just a comprehensive way for everything Drake related. Just straight forward. It's a beautiful setup in terms of just an e-commerce experiential way of letting your fans get whatever they want whenever they can. And I like the front page not being going straight to merch but being that room setup. Because again, it makes people want to click around. Like what is this? And again, we'll let y'all click through all that. But anytime you can make anything an experience, it's always going to be dope from a business standpoint when you market it to your fans. You already have them. But of course, he did this in partnership with Shopify. So the inspiration I take from something like this is how can I partner with the brand and leverage their platform to do something special? Instead of, hey, I'm just going to use this page. I'm just going to do a Shopify site now. And I'm going to do a leverage deal to then get like a sponsorship from them. And then I'm just going to talk about them in the ad. You know, like how can I make this deeper? Oh, I'm going to do it a whole experience that's cool to my fans, build my brand equity, makes me look even more like an artist, cool person, whatever you're trying to be. And then obviously the company has something to talk about too. Because you can market the fact that I did this experience versus if I just say, oh yeah, check out Shopify for your websites or hey, I got a Shopify store. All right, cool. There's another Shopify store. It's nothing for me to talk about or market or write art billboard articles on if I just do it that way. So whenever you can do something that's worth talking about and you can market and just get your name back out there, you're always going to win from multiple sides of the business. So yeah, now I like this before. We can't talk too deep about it because I feel like it's even better for everybody to experience and click on. Yeah, we can't be given spoilers. Yeah, it can give out too many spoilers, but he has all his partnerships. It's a really clean website experience. Well, I mean, look at that. As a quick aside, when we talked about it, I don't even think we should show it, but Travis Scott had his merch experience that he dropped to. Yeah. That's worth people looking at as well. And his was very good with the upsells. Mm-hmm. Nice little sales funnel field to it. Yep. Yep. It was like a day when you can click funnel sales. Oh, man. So y'all definitely check Travis's out as well because he's worth, again, just gleaning inspiration from. But back to Drake and his business decisions. Here's another example. Air Drake. In 2019, Drake received a free 185 million Boeing 767 from his long-term partnership with Canadian airline company Cargojet. Now, again, obviously, everybody might not be getting 185 million free jets, but there's a lot that can be gleaned from this, right, in terms of how you apply creatively. One, obviously, just having a jet is though because you're saving some money, right, instead of having to pay, right? So how can we flip a deal instead of taking on an expense? Maybe there's something that you want to do that is a constant expense and maybe I can find a company to partner with and get that for free. And now I'm advertising for them. Beautiful partnership, mutual, because obviously Drake is Drake and wherever he goes, being able to market that company is beneficial for them. But this is when I get into the things, when I think about how other artists can apply certain things like this to their own selves. Because Drake didn't just take the jet and say, I want to run, like, fly around. I got a free jet, whoop-de-doo. He said, yo, I'm going to get Virgil to blow to paint this jet. Yup, using his nothing was the same as inspiration. All right, so you see clouds just like the cover. One of the most classic, this probably the most classic Drake cover, maybe. Maybe Ty for, within the top two or three, for sure. It's easily top three. So we don't even get into that discussion. Let's just say top three. It's easily up there, all right? So Virgil Blow threw it, did nods to one. Then nothing was the same cover by having the clouds and things like that. We'll have this on the video for those who are watching. And then also across the bottom of the jet, as you talked about, Jacoria says, if you're reading this, we left. Written on the bottom of the jet, alluding to another Drake project, right? So one, he made it his. And this is just cool in general. But using an artist like Virgil will blow, all right? Even if you can't work with it, Virgil will blow, using an artist that has, that's just dope. You might be putting them on to the rest of the world, right? Or putting the rest of the world on to them. It's funny, I said that, given we're talking about Drake. You know what I mean? But we're like using the collaborations is something that more artists can do. And you don't have to be big for that. Yeah, yeah. Like just finding somebody dope and kind of A&Ring talent and making them a part of your campaign. All right? It's like finding someone else who speaks to the same culture of people as me, even if they're not necessarily as big as me. I just need the culture that I want to talk to to know you exist. To know you exist, exactly. And it makes me cooler, because even if they don't know them, I'm putting them on to this art. And it's far to that family.  That's so cool to see. It's how fans think, man. Like they don't, in that moment, they don't think about size and status. They just think about, I know Drake, I know Virgil. It's nice to see them come together and work on something. Right. And again, even if you pull the artist on complete obscurity, I think you can get a lot of benefit from something like this just because one, you're going to have this creative design and packaging of whatever your product is, whatever you put out, whether it's your shirts that you did for yourself, whether it's a card that you ride around in and you had an artist do it instead of just flash in a regular expensive car. You could get a cheaper car and then have an artist do something interesting to it and now it sticks out more and it is more meaningful as a brand piece than just having a fancy car. Yeah, I do. That's kind of crazy. That's why I want an artist to be like, man, I do my own cover art. I do my own X, Y, Z. Man, you lose not on the collaboration, the power of collaboration, man. Like the brand equity, the extra audience that you get to tap into. The extra audience and extra perspective if it's an actual dope artist. Yeah, like all because you want to be selfish and cheap. Yeah, and it doesn't mean you have to do it for every project. Maybe you do every cover except this one cover. You know, you're very selective about it, right? Because you have the ability to do it yourself. So you're mindful of who you choose and now they can bring something extra and you all can market this collaboration habit. It was like instead of, I think a lot of times, people do these normal deals or they miss the opportunity to make regular actions special by not making it a collaboration, by not sprucing it up to packaging. How many times do we buy something and pay more money just because the packaging is better? All right. If I could add up all the dollars, man. If I could add up all the dollars. Same reason in why we talk about stuff. We will talk about something a little bit more than we would something else just because of how the whole situation got packaged. So again, when I see this type of situation, yes, you get on the server say, oh man, Drake has a lot of money and he has a lot of leverage so a company wants to do a deal with him. But you can also say, well, what elements out of this were dope that I can't achieve and the collaboration with visual artists is very, very achievable. Yeah, I agree. Probably one of the, now that she kind of said, probably one of the easiest to achieve a collaboration that any artist can do. Yeah, I didn't think about it that way. And if you do it often, you know, you can start getting a little bit of a brand that's somebody who puts people onto dope visual artists. Yeah, true. Make a little wave in the art world next thing you know, that little lane opens up for you. That's a good point, man. Opens, man. All right. It's just going down these rabbit holes and they all lead to new forms of business, marketing and ultimately an overall better creative world which is obviously what we want to be at the core of what we do anyway. So it's not just about that service level business. It's like, how do you do it in a way that it builds your world, your lore, and how people experience you creatively. Now, the last thing I'm going to talk about in Drake, what are these shoes?  Let's read this. Oliver, one of Drake's partners said, we started creating product out of necessity. There was a lot of traveling and different clients so we needed practical versatile garments that looked stylish while also being recognizable to security as well as at business meetings. That's interesting. See, sometimes some of this stuff reads as like fake marketer way of why we created this fashion out of necessity. But the specificity of being recognizable to security but also at business meetings, I guess also it doesn't look too wild to be at a business meeting, that's interesting. That's interesting that he said that. But so using those type of things is just your inspiration. I like that idea because we do create a lot of stuff out of necessity in general. I'm not necessarily even a fashion brand or something like that, but we do. So he said, well, El Cateed at the helm, the OVO brand has done a number of successful collaborations and partnerships. Most recently, they've announced partnerships with major sports leagues like MLS, NFL, and NBA. Drake loves sports. So that's in his round. What is your round? This is in addition to collections with Disney, Playboy, Abaving Ape, and Canada Goose among... What's that, Disney? Did you say Disney? That's crazy. We need a Disney collab. I'm not, yeah. We got to see what this Disney collab is. I'm Drake. He just wanted to be in with Disney. Wanted to be able to say it. Sometimes you make the move for a later move. You do it just to say you did it. This move was made, but now I can say I did it. I did this. This is a bit Disney. And I probably built some relationships that are beneficial in Disney. Showed them a little bit of my leverage. That's what I better see this fast, which is a real move. Show a little bit of your leverage just so you can benefit further down the line. It also can work against you. Yeah, I mean, yeah. But most people aren't going to do what we did and actually go look at it. They're just going to be like, oh, you work with Disney? That's cool. And leave it at that. They're not going to go look at it and be like, oh, but that's what you did. It was whack. Just going to be like, oh, you did it. That's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when I say they can work against you, so Diddy did the Sauron deal just so he can get leverage with Diageo. And he eventually wanted to own his own tequila, which he is with De Leon. But he didn't have any ownership. With, you know, Sorak. So he was trying to prove himself and he did.  But he didn't have any ownership. And now he's experiencing this monkey bar situation of just not being a profit share owner, but having a true ownership partnership where we're also benefiting together. And Diageo is like, eh, we're not really going to support you hire a body. That's what Diddy's saying allegedly, right? I think proving yourself as a good strategy, but also if you want to use that angle and call it that, but it's also the pain that Kanye, Diddy, and many of these other guys go through by not wanting to wait. Because Diddy himself said he was being a little impatient. He didn't want to wait to build something from ground zero.  A lot of times in music, people get so attached to the marketing side of it because that's what they do.  They want to get straight to it. And when you don't go through the minutia of building a business, it's all good because the money's good, the brand's good. But then ultimately again and again, we lead to these same conversations of Kanye or Diddy saying, yo, I don't have ownership. And I just did X, Y, and Z. And they should give me, I deserve it because I made them this much money. I don't know if it adds up that way. You know how many times did a business make or has an employee made money for a business? But that don't mean you should own McDonald's. You know what I'm saying? If anybody knows, Diddy knows. If anybody knows, Diddy knows. You should have leverage. But, all right, no, actually, I thought you were going a different direction. I see what you're saying. You're going to hold another thing. If anybody knows that, Diddy knows that. Yeah. Yeah, you go in that direction. If anybody know, allegedly, Diddy should know. And be aware that making somebody money doesn't necessarily mean that they will get ownership or deserve certain things, right? It doesn't add up that clean. I think sometimes maybe we forget that when we go into these other sides of business. But, I don't say that to take away from anybody who's done these deals. But, I don't think we should be shocked when people don't necessarily see us in the same light as what we see ourselves. Yeah, definitely, man. You're a super hero to everybody, man. Right. Right. Like, Diddy 100% brought the other leverage. It's a rock. But, yeah, you're just one of our brands. Yeah, man. You're just a successful brand ambassador. We appreciate you for that. Glad you did that. But, it was wild to me because a lot of people are just figuring that out. And, I read this years ago, but it shocked me when I read it. I was like, wait, Diddy's own, if I remember correctly the way I read it, I was like, wait, I didn't realize Diddy didn't own any of this. Because, and it wasn't saying that he didn't own it. I was just reading what the agreement was and I was like, wait, hold up. This is a profit sharing agreement. Like, he basically has exclusive rights and he has exclusive rights to North America. So, it's like, it's not even worldwide. Like, oh snap, he's blowing up the brand and he's letting me experience it in North America. But, when I go to, you know, wherever overseas, I'm out in Paris and I'm drinking Sorak, Diddy ain't getting that cut, which is crazy. Based on my initial perception of Diddy's position and with Sorak. So, of course, again, these, Diddy in his words basically said, sometimes you have to do deals like this as well, kind of just to get your foot into it. Again, just trying to show and prove. So, look, that's just the cost that you weigh. Also doing business. I do appreciate about Diddy, man.  Which, you know, will take you far. Now, see, that's a whole other conversation. Because that's a real entrepreneurial person versus how a lot of these artists look at stuff, right? And how people complain. Because you're looking at a situation, I want to be done completely fair with what I've received fair to be from day one. All right? One, fair is a sliding scale, depending on who you're talking to and things change over time. But somebody like Diddy is probably looking at it, like, no matter what, especially with the marketing mind too. One, I'm gonna be able to sell this thing. So I'm gonna get more money just I'm gonna be able to sell it. Period. Like I'm getting the private share. That's great. That's part number one. We're just talking straight money. But then the entrepreneur is gonna go beyond that and say, me proving myself, even if Sorok, well, Diageo, the company that owns Sorok, doesn't give me a deal or do me right. I now have this in my portfolio, which extends my brand beyond oh, yeah, here's this hip hop guy within music. Oh, here's this guy who creates street products, like street clothes for hip hop artists, which he even talked about wanting to expand his brand beyond that. We should break down that video separately or whatever. And why he did suits and stuff like that because he didn't want to just be a street brand. It's, oh, well, so, okay. So this alcohol makes my brand a little bit more expansive as an entrepreneur and mogul, then just doing these other deals. So there's more value to just me owning as well. And then also I get to learn the business, right? So there's all these other points of value when you make a strategic decision behind just do your own. Because you would say, well, Diddy wasn't like a brand new artist or brand new businessman. This was in 2003 after the whole Diddy, I mean, Biggie, Mace, Mary J. Blige, all of that. And he had plenty of good business mentors behind him. So he knew quite a bit, right? This guy wasn't new to it. So why would he still do it if he didn't own? There's so many benefits beyond ownership. And sometimes we get short sighted with just the conversation of ownership, let alone the conversation between ownership and control, which are two completely different things. People don't realize it because you can own it. But if I control what you could do with it and I got to say, yes, no, maybe so, you got to run it through me first. Hey, sure. But you can market that you own it though. Go ahead and play and say what you got to say on the front end. Just know that, you know, before you do that, you got to talk with me. So like that, those are some of the things that this Drake, these apparel agreements and things made me think of. He did quite a few sneaker drops and things like that. We don't need to spend much time. If you're already interested in learning more about Drake and some of his business decisions, we will drop it again in the description of this video on YouTube. But also going forward, most of the full pods will be just on the DSPs. We're not making a switch immediately and we'll start talking about it for y'all on the next few podcasts. Just to remind y'all, we're going to drop clips on YouTube just for algorithm's sake, all right? Instead of full episodes and the way this particular demographic works. And then we'll have the full episodes for y'all who really want to get to it and get all the gems on Spotify and other DSPs. But again, this is just yet another episode. If y'all like episodes like this, let us know in the comment section as well. I'm Bram Ashon. Thank you for all you work. That's great. I'm Cory. I forgot what I was going to say. It's a difference. Never forget who I am, bro. What you mean? I know who I am. And we out. Peace.


All right, so for a long time people have been talking about me asking does this guy even like anything that he reads and like Obviously I do. You know, I have positive reviews out and stuff It's just oftentimes more fun to pick apart exactly why something is bad and why it doesn't work And so I focus on that a lot and plus those often get more views but for this one for this one time just to Appease the people who talk like that. I'm gonna talk about my top 10 favorite books that I've ever read now These are individual books. They aren't these aren't like full series that I'm talking about and there's going to be massive massive massive spoilers for everything that I talk about so as soon as I bring it up if it's something you don't want to get spoiled just skip to the next one, please and Well, it's it's top 10 list. You know how that works. Let's get started. This is the introduction song It's not very good, but it's not too long number 10 is where the red fern grows Now this book is something that I'm not normally into because it's one of those like Classic literature things that they made you read in school and from what I understand a lot of other people Read the where the red fern grows in elementary or middle school. So I'm not alone in this that said It's a beautiful beautiful book It's just about this country boy who wants to get some hunting dogs so that he can hunt down raccoons which is a popular thing in the area where he lives and He for a long time He saves up money to get some he gets them and it works out great and then most of the book is just him training them training them to learn to hunt and then Them hunting and being good at it winning contests and stuff and then as with all these like a boy and his dog type stories It ends tragically the dogs die, you know There's a horrible mountain lion attack and one of them dies And then the other one just refuses to eat or anything and then she dies and yeah, it's really really sad But that's life, you know, that that's the thing about it is it's a beautiful story And you really feel for the dogs and the boy, but life does go on That's how things work whether you're talking about pets or friends or family members Eventually they will leave you or you'll die and leave them and in fact the Prologue and the epilogue of the book is the boy as an old man who's living off in the city now and He's just reminiscing about his old life and reminiscing about the dogs and he loves them and he misses them, but He understands that life does go on and I think that's an important message for People of all ages, but especially young people. So this is one of those cases where schools making you read a book I think works out. Okay, and Well, no, I don't have a whole lot else to say it's just in broad strokes very beautiful book And even now that I'm older, I've re-read it once or twice and it's still Beautiful heartbreaking story number nine is the last Olympian which is book five of the Percy Jackson and the Olympian series now A lot of you have probably read this one because it was a popular series and it was basically just Harry Potter but with Greek gods instead of wizards and Yeah, it's a great series. You know the first four books are Various plots about Kronos trying to come back to life and at the end of the fourth book Battle of the Labyrinth He he finally does come back and they're like well Shit now what he's coming back. Typhon's about to Emerge there's other gods that are siding with Kronos like how we gonna do this and then the fifth book comes around and The bulk of it is just this giant battle in Manhattan where they're trying to prevent the forces of Kronos from reaching the Empire State Building, which is the entrance to Olympus and Destroying the gods thrones because the gods are off fighting typhon and they're very busy now I said a while ago that the Battle of Hogwarts in Harry Potter was very similar to this except Battle of Hogwarts was a Little bit better because it actually took place at Hogwarts Castle Which was the main setting of most of the series Whereas Percy Jackson the Battle of Manhattan was you know in Manhattan Which the majority of the books had not been anywhere near there and a lot of people were talking to me like um Actually the entrance to Olympus is in Manhattan. That's why they were fighting there. No shit guys Stop being stupid, but the characters don't have any sort of real connection there and the readers audience Don't have any real connection there like Percy lives there, which okay great, but That there's very little time spent there This isn't the magical world that we've become so enamored with that would be like Camp Halfblood or Olympus itself or The labyrinth or just the Sea of Monsters other places like that if they were fighting in one of those places It'd be a lot better is all I'm saying all that said still a fantastic battle You know it's still a small group of demigods who are vastly outnumbered by these legions of monsters and other demigods and the occasional actual God shows up to fight and It's it's bad and so Percy actually has to kind of sacrifice part of his humanity almost when he Bays in the River Styx and gets the oh I forget the name, but it's the same blessing that Achilles had it Yeah, actually might just be called the blessing of Achilles. This is why you write shit in your notes before you start filming James But anyways, yes, he gets the same blessing that Achilles has where he's really powerful But he also has one weakness and if that one weakness gets hit he's he's done That's that's everything and there's a lot of talk about bringing the gods together Like bringing the gods who have not joined the battle for one petty reason or another There's a lot of Percy and company Trying to get them to join up together and put aside their petty differences because like if they don't then They're all gonna die Olympus is gonna get destroyed and all that important stuff like that. That's That that'd be bad for them. Obviously.  So let's be careful and then Well, obviously the good guys win and the bad guys lose But it's still a very cool epic intense battle which takes up the bulk of the book The the characters still go through some growth and grow up and become better people and at the end in the resolution They do change the world for the better like Percy gets the gods to finally agree to Acknowledge their children all the time like not necessarily Interact with them and treat them nicely but always acknowledge them so that they at least know who they are and that's a pretty big deal and It's just a good way of showing dysfunctional families Maybe not necessarily start loving each other unconditionally, but putting aside their differences and reaching a new What's the word reaching a new understanding number eight sphere by Michael Crichton?  This is alien. So they bring in a whole team of experts together Just like they just like they did in timeline and Jurassic Park And they send them down underwater to these little underwater base things to investigate the ship and find out what it is and can they get anything out of it? Is it dangerous all that stuff? However, once they're down there and actually go into the ship they notice that most of the writing in it is in English And they access the computer and it turns out it actually Took off hundreds of years in the future and it was built by humans and somehow it came back in time But there's also this big sphere on it, which is not human in origin it's something alien and it starts making weird shit happen and Eventually they realize oh it gives us some sort of crazy power which we can use to do all kinds of crazy stuff well, what was the point of all that and The biggest scary part of sphere is that we don't know what the sphere is. We don't know what it wants We don't know if it's sentient or not. We don't know Who or what built it or why and we don't know how the human ship got sent back in time We don't know what it was Intending to do in the first place. There's so many mysteries that we never find out the answer for and I'm not sure I want to find out the answer to them because I read this when I was fairly young for the first time I think I was around 12 when I read it and Looking back it was my first interaction with cosmic horror because Yeah, it's something way bigger and more powerful than humanity and even just finding out what it is is terrifying part of why I think that this book isn't more popular and part of why I think it didn't really make a very good movie is that a Pretty big portion of it is just people sitting around in rooms looking at data trying to interpret it and Trying to figure out mysteries of like oh, what's going on until finally it clicks and While that can be pretty Engaging in the form of a book and pretty intense in the form of a book It doesn't always work that well in a visual medium.  Therefore spheres a great book number seven is World War Z Does this one even need introduction? Come on. It's it was written by max Brooks. It had that Movie which was fine, but it had nothing to do with the book. It was a shitty adaptation man, what a waste of good source material and this one is just a series of interviews about people who did various different things during a ten-year-long zombie war and I mean, I Can't really talk about all of them But I can say that we get to see the world Slowly discover this new virus that's going around and then slowly start to fall apart as the governments either Don't want to deal with it or don't know how to deal with it and individual citizens Certainly don't know how to deal with it. So it's just this new disaster that we're not prepared for which is a common theme And max Brooks's works. I reviewed de-evolution a little while ago and that was a huge part of that one as well but Yes, World War Z is just all about how humans were not prepared for this disaster and so it almost killed us but then we adapted to it and We pushed it back and then we took back most of the world not all of it, you know, the zombies are still there There's still a threat. There's still some places that are entirely overrun by them but humanity has overtaken most of the planet and Now we have adapted. We know how to live with the zombies. So the only thing about this book that Was a real problem to me and I wish it had not been this way was that the interviewer doesn't really get a Personality or a story like if he had ended it or at some point in there put in his own story Like hey, I was just a regular refugee and this was my experience or something like that That would have been a lot better as it stands. World War Z is still the best zombie story out there You know it because it's not really about the zombies it's about how weak human societies really are and Just shows all of the issues with not only our cultures But the way we individually act and our governments number six is the reunion, which is anamorph's book number 30 now this is the one where Marco runs into his mother aka viscer one again and They actually interact for the first time rather than just him seeing her at a distance and Those of you who have read anamorph's probably already know exactly why I put this on the list those who haven't Might be a little confused. There's a crazy amount of backstory to the series Which I can't really get into I'll do my best to summarize it Basically, there's this alien race of like these slug things called yurks Which can slide into your brain and take it over and perfectly imitate you They've already taken over a bunch of other planets this way and now they're trying to infiltrate earth But there's this other group of aliens who are well They're not the good guys, but they're the better guys called the andolites one of them crashes on earth one day and a bunch of kids run across it and the andolite tells them all about the situation and he gives them the ability to Morphin to animals pretty straightforward one of the anamorph's is a guy named Marco and his mom died about a year before the story begins but it turns out his mom is a controller which is someone who was taken over by a yurk and Not only is she a regular controller. She is actually a controller for one of the highest ranking yurks Inexistence. She's in charge of the invasion of earth. Her name is viscer one and she is by this point for various reasons kind of Maybe not exiled is the right word, but she's not very well liked and she's kind of being hunted down by other yurks and So she finds the anamorph's and they have to kind of make a deal with her all that in order to Try and get the other yurks there because the anamorph's They're not really trying to destroy the earth because they can't do that They know they can't but they are trying to slow down their invasion enough that andolite reinforcements can come and save them And so some stuff goes down and Marco is like very emotionally torn about this because he just wants to save his mom so badly And that's the main thing that he's trying to do in this book like he It's not that he doesn't care about trying to save other people from yurks or any of that like that's still a big deal to him But he just wants his mom back He wants to save her because he's thought that she's dead and he's only like 14 or 15 at this point And he has a chance to get her back But at the end of the book not only is he unable to save her he has to kill her himself and it's Whoo, man like that one moment Kind of makes all of the anamorph's for me like don't get me wrong There's a lot of great moments in that series and a lot of really really dark moments in that series, but That one stands out even among all the other shit that's in there because he Has to say I love you to his mom And then at that moment the the controller and his mom realized who he is Because the anamorph's hide their identities and then he has to throw her off a cliff and it later turns out that she survives Which does admittedly take some of the bite out of it, but still Jesus Christ that was a hard moment to read when I was a kid and even looking back. It's still Damn like that's the moment where Marco really became a true I Don't even know how it put it But he went from just being someone who is trying to save the world and his loved ones to someone who I will kill the Yerks at any cost number five the hero of ages which is Mistborn number three or the end of Mistborn era one However, you want to say that now this one will probably be a bit controversial because the ending to the original Mistborn series is controversial, but Honestly, I don't know what the hell people are talking about. This one's amazing So the first two books you find out that there are these two gods on the planet schedule called ruin and preservation Who have a yin and yang thing going on? They're keeping each other in check, but at the same time they can't really create anything without the other and anyways they find out that ruin has been freed from his prison and Preservation is slowly dying and so they need to find a way to deal with ruin or he will just destroy the whole planet and That's mostly what this book is about. It's about them trying to finally reunite all the final corners of the final Empire which is a stupid name, but whatever it is what it is and It's just them trying to reunite everything and find a way to defeat ruin and it seems very hopeless for a very long time but near the end Everything clicks and comes together like stuff that has been hinted at since the first book finally comes into play like Why does Vin have the ability to pierce through copper clouds and sense when people are using alamance even when they're hiding it?  Where is the Lord ruler's atm stash? Well, it turns out it was all hidden in the minds where the atm comes from to begin with or not all of it But the majority of it was hidden there. Oh, okay, the Candra have it that oh Alright, that's that's helpful and then from the beginning of this book. Why are some of the soldiers being attacked by the mists? Why are they dying?   We're all about to die. Wait a minute No, we don't have to do that. And so he takes both of their powers. He becomes a god He becomes the god harmony and he fixes the whole world he saves everybody and I've read stuff before where Like the main character turns out to not be the hero it turns out Oh the real hero turns out to be this person at the last second and it's not always super satisfying Whereas this one it comes out not out of nowhere But it comes out and you're like, oh that that actually makes sense like it fits with the prophecy That was there before and it makes sense that says I would do this it makes sense that Vin would act that way Yeah, this all works and so Yeah, just fantastic ending. I don't know what people are talking about like are they just disappointed that the world was saved in Such a way. I just I just don't get it number four a memory of light Which is a wheel of time 14 or the wheel of time 14, which is the final book in the series This is another climax, which was also Well sort of written by Brandon Sanderson, you know, it was obviously outlined in all that by Robert Jordan but Sanderson finished it and a slight tangent during my wheel of time Worldbuilding analysis a long time ago. I mentioned that it was my introduction to Brandon Sanderson and people got pissy at me For saying that for some reason Guys he he finished the last couple of books. That's where I first saw his name That's that was my first introduction to his work. Even if it's not 100% his work. I'm not sure What you want me to say there, but you know, whatever. Um, yeah wheel of time memory of light That's also how you end an epic fantasy series Like this one is a little bit more predictable Don't get me wrong, but that's not bad Like we've known for many books by this point that Rand is going to have to face the dark one and shove him back into his prison and there's going to have to be a last battle Excuse me where millions and millions of Trollux and Darkspawn are gonna be coming in trying to kill everybody and Humans just have to fight back or they die and that's that's the one rule to it and That's pretty much the entire book. It's just the last battle. It's like 800 pages of that In fact, there's a chapter in there, which is just called the last battle and it's like 180 pages But this is everything you want in a lot in an epic battle It has last stands it has the heroes trying to make plans and then those plans go awry and They think they're fucked until they make new plans. It has intelligent battle strategy, which is surprisingly rare in any sort of fiction really which is Is very annoying to me, but whatever the wheel of time has it and a memory of light also has You know bad guys making final stands and finally getting killed.   There's Dozens of really cool moments where I just went whoa, that was awesome. Whoa, that was cool and then Well, there's not even anything else to say here it wraps up the story It wraps up a lot of character arcs. It develops a lot of characters further than they were before and Wow, there are a couple little nitpicks I have with it overall Fucking amazing book number three the way of Kings now. Don't worry. This is the final Sanderson book So if someone's upset that I keep putting him on here, this is the last one, but the Starlight archives man a lot of people's favorite seems to be Oathbringer and Don't get me wrong. I really like Oathbringer. I think it's a Phenomenal book, but it also could have been like 10 or 20,000 words shorter But way of Kings not a single word is wasted. Okay, that is the introduction to this story It's the introduction to this world. It's the introduction to the desolations and the heralds and The hot high storms and the Everstorm and all that important stuff even if you don't understand it completely all of that important stuff comes in here and Shalon's story is it's kind of a it seems like a side story at first in this one And it doesn't really connect until the second one, but that one's that one's still pretty good I you know, I like Shalon as a character. I like all the stuff. She's getting into I like Zeth's story Dalinar story is also a lot of fun and it gives context to everything and you know all that great stuff but this one is primarily focused on Kaladin and I would still say Kaladin is the best character in Stormlight archives so far because He has been beaten down a lot over the course of his life and just So many horrible things keep happening to him and it's ended with him being a slave who is contemplating suicide at the beginning of this and He eventually manages to you know step back from the edge and he says you know what? I'm I'm not dying I decide I want to live and I'm gonna make these other slaves that I'm with also want to live So he does that he trains with them he makes them all become friends and he starts getting them into this idea that hey maybe we'll be able to escape one day and so they keep training like that and they also Work at it a little bit in order to help themselves survive better during the battles because they don't really have any protection and During all this Kaladin also starts discovering his knight's radiant powers Which are kind of weak compared to what he can do later But still very impressive and almost unknown by the people in this world's standards, which Yeah, that's cool to see him Discover all that and everything but when the climax comes when Dalinar and a bunch of his men are left stranded and surrounded by all the Parshendi and they're definitely going to die and Kaladin and his bridgemen have a chance to just run off like they get separated from the army They have a chance to hey, we can just leave, you know, we can escape We don't have to be slaves anymore But then they see all the thousands of men that are about to be killed behind them and they just Kaladin and the others can't bring themselves to leave them there So they run off and they go and save them and a lot of themselves die in that battle But Kaladin finally speaks the second ideal of the knight's radiant which is I will protect those that cannot protect themselves and They wind up getting freed anyways They finally get a purpose in life and that's the thing that made this so powerful to me is that Kaladin doesn't see a purpose in life But he finally forces himself to find one and that's the thing purpose in life usually won't just hit you in the face, but you have to go out and find it and Kaladin did and even though his character still goes through a lot of development after this That is the core of it. He wants to protect those that cannot protect themselves and he Does that admirably number two Abaddon's gate, which is the expanse book number three now The expanse the first two books They introduce the proto molecule, which is this thing created by Another alien race. They don't know anything about it.  Appears on Venus and moves itself out to the outer edges of the solar system And they immediately set up set up a blockade and they're like do not touch this thing. We're not fucking with it Just leave it alone but at the beginning of Abaddon's gate some guy goes through it and it opens up and it's a Gate to another dimension another dimension which is full of other gates and a sort of space station and all of it appears to Have been built by whoever built the proto molecule Abaddon's gate has the tone of a ghost story or a horror story Well, I guess most ghost stories are horror stories But whatever you get the point there's this abandoned area that you don't know much about and you don't know if the people who built it Have just left or they're all dead and it turns out they are all dead But then we start wondering well what killed them and how and how are we gonna avoid meeting that same fate and that's a very Very difficult question to answer because the space station almost does blow up the entire soul system Which is the kind of a stupid name for it, but it's you know the one we live in with earth and Mars and all that like it almost blows all of that up because the humans are just messing around with its security protocols and I Mean just knowing how Unfathomably old these things are and how unfathomably powerful they are and how the laws of physics mean nothing to them even though we have to abide by that that's That's just terrifying to know and terrifying to think about and in addition this book also gets Finally a decent villain in the form of Clarissa who even though she is Well, I wouldn't say she's in the right but she Does have real reason to hate James Holden and so it makes sense why she does all this stuff But it also makes sense why she eventually has her turnaround and decides to help save everybody And it does make sense why these other humans would be so terrified of this thing that they would try and Kill all themselves in order to shut it down even though it wouldn't mind of working But you know it it would seem like a heroic self-sacrifice to them and all of this makes sense And so we still get some Cool action scenes between humans that are fighting and all that this whole book mostly gets such a high Spot on the list because of the horror though like again I like cosmic horror, but it's very rare that it can do it super well nowadays And in fact most of the time when something works well as cosmic horror I've noticed it doesn't really advertise itself as cosmic horror, but I Don't know that's kind of a Side tangent whatever Basically the point is in this one we find out the protomolecule creators are dead We find out someone or something killed them but we don't find out that much about either of them and then at the end all the gates open up and humanity can go out into thousands of new solar systems, but also What now you know what what happens next and Well, the rest of the expanse is seeking to answer that because shits getting even more real But the last book hasn't come out yet like hurry up guys Come on. We haven't even gotten a title or a release date of any sort come on hurry up And finally number one is the last four demonauta books now I know I said this was individuals, but hear me out for a sec The last four demonauta books are written almost like it's just one book But it's split into four pieces like if this were an epic fantasy and this were the climax All of the events of those four books would probably just be mushed into one because the first three of them Which are books seven eight nine in the series Those take place More or less simultaneously. It just follows different characters and then number ten is the real climax Whereas I think if this had been epic fantasy or space opera or something like that rather than young adult fantasy I think that it would have just gone back and forth between the characters up until near the end where it's just Follows grubs all the way through but now that I've defended my placing this on the list Which if I'm being honest, I could have just said fuck you. It's my list I'll do what I want, but now that I'm done with that This is basically how you end a series perfectly so in the demonauta There are you know, obviously demons that live in other dimensions that occasionally come in and attack humans And some humans have magic so they fight back against that that seems pretty straightforward And earlier on in the series They had tried to make a tunnel which is like a permanent portal that will allow more powerful demons through so that they can Come in and destroy the entire world because you know, they're just demons They like chaos and destruction and all that shit again pretty straightforward But then once we get to book seven That's when we really enter the endgame because before this they found some weird mysterious demon Which they just called the shadow because you know, that's what it is It's a giant mass of moving shadows, and they don't know exactly what it is and so The book death shadow is the seventh one which is the first one on this list list You know, it's it's hard to explain without sounding crazy But you know death shadow follows character named Beck who has this weird ability to not only remember absolutely everything She's ever heard or seen but to touch people and start to absorb their memories and over the course of this one Demons attack and the main group winds up splitting into two Which is why we follow some different characters in the next two books and the Group that Beck is with goes to this cruise ship Which has been taken over by demons and everyone there is dead And while they're there They meet the shadow and they're trapped for a little bit and Beck manages to touch the shadow So she gets some of its memories and it turns out the shadow is death Like for a long time death was just a force like time or gravity You know it just existed it didn't have a mind, but then Beck herself earlier in the series wound up not dying when she was supposed to and so that just Turned it on like now it has a mind and it wants to just destroy everything and so it's working with the demons and Well shit, that's not good And then the leader of all the human magicians a guy named Baranibus who was also the most powerful human magician in many many hundreds of years He also has to sacrifice himself in order to let the others escape so they escape But they're like well shit. How do you fight death itself and also we don't have a leader Okay, now what then we get into book eight, which is wolf island and that one follows the like main main character grubs As he's going to well an island full of werewolves as the name subtly implies and Basically they're going there to fight some humans who are evil and working with the demons for whatever reason, you know It's it's not that important. What's important is that grubs is a werewolf, but he's managed to keep it suppressed For throughout the series But during this one when he's surrounded by all of them it starts to start bubbling back up to the surface and While they're running around getting attacked by wolves and they finally get cornered and they're about to die Grubs finally has to let go and he turns himself into a werewolf, but he kills the alpha of the other pack And then he says basically what come at me, bro come at me bitches come and fight me and a bunch of other wolves come and fight him and he kills them one by one until all the remaining wolves acknowledge him as you know what? Yep, you're you're the leader. Let's We'll do what you say and grubs also manages to keep Mostly keep control of himself like his human mind is still there for the most part And if I ever do like a top 10 epic moments video I think that one's gonna be on there somewhere because holy shit. That was cool And then now that grubs is the leader of the wolf werewolves he can Take them off and they can go and help fight demons and stuff because demons are starting to Come through in portals all over the world and they aren't just attacking little bits at a time now They're attacking all over the place and now all sorts of humans know about them Then we get into book nine which follows another character named colonel who just got separated from the others And this one is probably the most important because in this one we learned that Not only other infinite numbers of dimensions. We already knew that but in our human dimension It's already an infinite universe like we have earth which has intelligent life on it but then there's also Thousands if not millions of other planets spread throughout which also have intelligent life and also occasionally get attacked by demons and stuff so colonel learns that like oh, okay We're not the only ones that that are out there that we need to be worrying about and so He is offered a role to be one immortal, but also because he's so good at creating portals he's offered a role to take uh A couple of every sentient race to this planet which they call the ark and then when demons come to attack he'll just open a giant portal and move the ark through so that They'll be safe from the demons and they're just gonna do that forever And they think that's the only way they're gonna preserve life because otherwise the demons are just gonna keep coming forever And eventually destroy everything and colonel thinks that's a good Idea, but he doesn't want to abandon his friends.  Sorry, this sucks, but I got to leave but grub says nope and then gouges out his eyes so that he can keep him on earth and Then we go into the final book Which is again, everybody's dead. Bec actually winds up betraying them at the end of the last one At least it seems like she's betraying them because later it turns out. Okay. She's just working with A demon named lord loss in order to kill all the other demons, but in this one I've never read a book that feels more hopeless Like I've read stuff where the bad guys come close to destroying the world and all but I've never read one where it feels more like Yep, the world just hates you life sucks.  I've never read anything that made me just stop and go. Oh, I did not think of that more than hell's heroes did and so For that reason the demonata is my favorite book series like, you know, all the books together are great But then those last four, which I still consider them to basically just be one split into a couple of parts Okay, I know I'm gonna get hate for that, but that's how I consider it to be That is just how you end something That is how you Continue to raise the stakes until the absolute last moment And then have the characters use their powers in a way that we never really considered To do something crazy, which defeats the bad guys like that that is how you do it Okay, and that's also why I still kind of have a soft spot for young adult stuff because There's a lot of stuff that is considered young adult or could be considered young adult that I just absolutely love and The demonata is yeah, it could be considered young adult fantasy even though it goes off in a bunch of crazy different directions Like I think more authors need to take notes from Darren Chan if they want their stories to like stand out from the crowd and Be different and not just be standard stuff read more Darren Chan and You know what that's that's it. That is my top 10 favorite books list I think I mean it goes without saying that all of them have You know great characters and great plot and they're all very well written and all that That kind of goes without saying which is why I didn't focus on it too much this one I just wanted to sort of give a little bit of a summary and an explanation as to What exactly made them all hit me in that very specific way Because that's the thing about this like obviously it's all opinion-based But once you get down to Like the absolute best of anything that someone loves like your favorite video game or your favorite anything It's usually going to hit something very specific That only appeals to a small number of people and other people are going to be a little bit confused about it There will probably be people that are confused about why I love the demonata so much Like they'll understand that I love it, but they'll just be confused about well You don't love this other stuff more But it just hits very specific buttons for me and I'm sure A lot of you are the same way so if you agree disagree, whatever Comments below and obviously Watch more that's about all I have to say bye Super big thanks to everyone who watched including my patrons Appo Savalainen Alex Humva Ashley Watson Ava Tumor Bequin Brother Santotys Christopher Quinten Emily Miller Joel Johnny St. Clair Madison Lewis Bennett Ronnie Sarkis Avakian Taylor Briggs Tobacco Crow Tom Beanie Topher Wheeler Vacuous Silas Vavictus and all the other names on here you guys are You guys are pretty great and I appreciate all of you watching this far if you haven't subscribed to my channel already Please do that and please like the video so it gets shared around more and you know Comment on it if you have anything to say Or if you don't have anything to say feel free to comment as well. That's that's also great. Anyways, I'll see you later. Bye


I started off with an idea of what autism was and why autistic's face so many problems in our society. My interviews with Rick gave me a lot of insight into how someone's opinions can change about the condition. He also taught me just how crucial getting an in-depth personal understanding of Asperger's is to the world. With Michelle, she gave a great outsider's perspective on autism in children and what may be at the heart of the problems they face in adult life. And lastly, Peter helped me understand the actual issues autistic struggle with and just how important small acts of kindness and understanding are to the lives of these people.


Hi everyone, I'm Rob from Project Sandbox, a University of Lethbridge Library Initiative. In this video, we're going to look at our Raspberry Pi kits. In the kit, you'll find a Raspberry Pi 3B Plus with a sense hat, the case, and a 16 gigabyte microSD memory card on the back right here. Two meter HDMI cable, a DVI to HDMI adapter, and a power cable with an on-off switch extension. So if this is taken off, you can just click it back on there. Just remember that if you're taking out one of our Raspberry Pi kits, that you have a monitor with a HDMI or DVI input, as well as a mouse and a keyboard, both have to be wired or have a dongle. So to set up all these components, like I said, you need to have your own monitor. With this monitor, I've already attached the DVI HDMI adapter. You don't need to go through that whole process with me. Just make sure you're putting it in the correct port.  So why don't we connect all those first? So we got our power connected with the on-off switch. We'll connect the HDMI. Make sure it goes in the correct way. And then you want to connect a wired keyboard or a keyboard or dongle and a wired mouse, or mouse with a dongle. Okay, so whenever it's finally set up, you just press the on switch, you'll see the lights on this comes on, the light here comes on, and you'll see the monitor has a nice rainbow screen for you to look at. So now that the Raspberry Pi has started, why don't I show you some of the things you can do with it? The first thing you'll want to do is you'll want to connect to the internet. So to do that, it's just like anything else where you click on the Wi-Fi and you would choose whichever network sign on to it like you normally would. So we're on guest at U of L right now because that's where we are, obviously. First of all, I do want to also apologize to you if anything is jittery on the screen. I'm using the Raspberry Pi to screen capture everything. So it's not the most reliable thing. Anyway, let's look at a couple of the things you can do outside of that. So first of all, the Raspberry Pi runs something called Raspbian, which is like Windows or iOS. It's the operating system that it uses and it's Linux based. So if you know Linux based stuff, you're pretty much golden with this. So why don't we look at a couple of things? The first thing I want to show you is that you can use something called Python on here. Python is how you can do all the coding for the sense hat, the little nice LED matrix thing that I showed you. If you're not sure about everything a sense hat does, you can actually Google it. What we'll go into though is sense hat emulator. So when it opens up, you'll notice that we have the Raspberry Pi image right there and you can control a couple of things with it. This is just the emulator though you're not actually connecting to the Raspberry Pi. If you would like to connect to the Raspberry Pi, we can look at an example. So say we want it to do that rainbow pattern that we saw when it started up. If you go into those little areas that I just showed, you can click on the thing and it's going to open up a Python script with everything that will make a rainbow pattern. The one thing you'll need to do though to connect it to the sense hat is where it says the sense underscore emu. Kind of like the bird. You change it to the sense underscore hat and when you hit file save, you can click run and run module. And then what this will do is it'll tell it to go to the Raspberry Pi sense hat and it'll start running it. I'll let you experiment with this to see what actually happens because it is quite gratifying. At least I find it gratifying. Next, I'm going to show you the terminal. So this is where you go into to actually affect some of the functionality of the Raspberry Pi itself. This is a pretty powerful thing to actually go into. So the terminal uses something called bash to do all the functions that you would actually want it to do. So we're going to put LS and this brings up a list of all the directories that we have. If you would like to change a directory, you can just go to write CD and be mindful this is case sensitive. It's not that intelligent. It can't figure out what you're doing unless you're doing case the way it should be. So this would take us into our desktop just by going CD desktop. So you can play around with that. This is a way to explore what's within all of your different areas, stuff like that. Yeah, just play around with it and you'll get a hang of it or you can go to one of our workshops and talk to Bryson who knows way more than me about some of this stuff. He's very nice fellow. He's very helpful. Okay, anyway, to go up a directory. So say we want to go back to just the Raspberry Pi. You just hit dot dot. Oh, sorry.  Then it goes up a directory. If say you're running something and it's not opening, you can hit control C and that'll cancel whichever function you want to do. Let's see if I can do it before it does this. Oh, no, can't do it. Anyway, say you have this giant script running and you want it to stop. Just hit control plus C and it'll stop doing that. If you want to clear all the screen because you don't like all this random junk anymore, you can just write clear and hit enter. It'll clear it off. And then the final thing I'll show you that you can do with the terminal you can do so much more than this. So I want to reiterate that is just if you write pseudo grass Pi dash config just like that. Not just like that. Just like that and hit enter. This will take you into the functionality of the Raspberry Pi where you can change things like the password the network options how it boots. So like what it boots from if you want to overclock it you actually any time I've tried to overclock this it doesn't allow me to so if you can get it to do it. Awesome. Interfacing options. This is where you can really mess up the Raspberry Pi and if you want to I encourage you to do that. If you do mess it up though please just let us know so that we can re-image it and everything will be good to go again for the next person. I don't want to change anything though so I'm just going to get out of that. So I showed you how to use Python just a little bit with the sense hat you'll need to explore it more if you want to know more how to do the terminal a little bit. The last thing I'll show you is just some of the applications that you can use on there. So to find all the applications you just hit on the Raspberry Pi logo and you can just kind of scroll through. So if you notice there's no like name brand software. It's all open source software is generally what you'll find on here. So you can do things like Audacity VLC media player GIMP Inkscape whatever instead of Microsoft Office you have Libra Office stuff. I'd encourage you just to look through things and play with it a little bit because the Raspberry Pi like the whole point of it is that you can do anything to it digitally physically. Please don't break it but digitally if say you want to see what it'll take to totally take out the Raspberry Pi system digitally. Feel free to do that if you want to go into the terminal and you are kind of unsure about what some of the things you're writing will do. That's okay. Try it out. That's the whole point of these things. Anything that you might have been scared to do to your Windows computer totally feel free to do that to this Raspberry Pi. So that's what I have for you. Thank you very much for watching and remember that although we went over different aspects of our Raspberry Pi's that is far from everything that you can do with them. Just remember to be creative and try stuff out. Once again, thank you very much for watching and please subscribe to our library channel. If you're interested in keeping up to date with videos coming out of our library whether those be Project Sandbox or Library Proper Videos and if you would like to continue watching videos you can click on one of the videos on the screen right now and continue your Project Sandbox journey. Thank you very much and I hope to see you soon.


Going on everyone Sam here with late sports cards ripping at 23 Bowman's best university football delight 10 box case number 7 picker team style Names and teams Alvin W with Arkansas. Chris v. Ohio State Damien M Duke LSU and Texas Dan B with Oregon Dennis R. Oklahoma UCLA Edward P. Washington Clemson Eric S. Wisconsin Gregory C. Tennessee Jason L with Colorado Johnathan L Notre Dame Georgia Keith B with Florida State Kenneth B with North Carolina Larry S. Missouri Luke S. Kansas State Michael H Penn State Mitchell J with USC Raymond D. Michigan Shannon L all others Stephen L with Alabama and Troy W with Ole Miss One thing hold on before you start everybody one sec. Edward picking up a spot as well. Let's get it going everybody. Here we go One more case of this after six teams left in that break. That is it That is it I'll be done for the day and it'll be handed handed off to Forrest here tonight. I'm just throwing it at you That would have been much funnier That is Michael Penex gunslingers to 50 on the gold and it drew pine gold to 50 as well all other by way of Arizona State God Damien Martinez refractor to 100 Carson Beck Rats on that one pink lava for Georgia 299 will Howard going to K K state Got blue to 150 Dorian singer USC Yellow to 75 Dylan Gabriel for Oklahoma First auto Ricky white to a 15 UNLV so I'll go all other the running Rebels Got Jerry verse Florida State refractor on That's FSU and then a gold 43 of 50 KJ Jefferson going to Arkansas Congrats Arkansas Cam and Michael picking some spots up Down to four to go now everybody Notre Dame Ole Miss Kansas State Arkansas Thank you everybody taking spots in that who Somebody took Thank You Peter picking up Georgia Appreciate you buddy and Wayne picking up. No not well. Yeah, Pascal picking up a spot Wayne picking up a random team spot as well. So thank you all appreciate that guys Very much for to go on the last break of the day here. I'll break the daytime I'm going home and taking in that Say the next break. Yep Doing the same Orange Blake shape and studio stars to 25 for Baylor all other and orange drew Aller for Penn State to 25 returning next year Julian Fleming Ohio State Jevon Bullard 44 50 gold nice one there for Georgia to 150 bow Knicks for Oregon To 100 pink Lava Casey Thompson all other Green to 99 is Malik Benson three mini diamonds for Alabama Gold to 50 Ricky white nice one there again UNLV all other Jared first refractor auto again Let's go Jason Jason Jason there it is 10 of 25 Travis Hunter Shedur Sanders dual auto. Let's go man. She's 10 of 25 on the orange. Let's go. Congrats, buddy. Hey, man.  It's cool Love those man. Let's go. Congrats Jason. Good stuff, buddy I was gonna say you really did Jason. Oh my god. You really did that is Dorian singer masterpieces and orange Dorian singer USC to 25 Sam Hartman blue to 150 J to not for Cal Yellow to 75 Brady Cook for Mizzou Got Grand Wells to 100 on the pink Lava for Votek to 99 bookie Irving Going to Oregon Jesus man 725 Caleb Williams. There we go Mitch Congrats, Mitchell. Mitchell J with that one. Good stuff, buddy USC elements of the game to 25 Devin Leary, Kentucky to a 15 and Frank or junior 750 for all other Card Cards balancing the scales there. I know also Mitch I did add $10 and break credit for you on that bad beat Don Edwards, Blake Corham, JJ McCarthy, big boys in the big house. These are awesome. I freaking love these cards, dude The the signs of the times those are so cool, man. That is a gold Devin Leary to 50 Yeah, no problem, Mitch. I got you buddy Cameron Ward refractor Blue to 150 Trey Benson And that does remind me if you do not have an account with us make sure to sign up With an account on the website make sure you're signed in whatever you make a purchase We'll accrue points that you could use for percentages off So you could take $5 off all the way up to like $3,000 off depending on how many points you have obviously Don Venezeraco to 75 for Boston College To 100 cam rising pink Lava 26 and 99 Justice Ellison For Wake Forest all other we've got drew pine nice one there for All other good Lord What a five Caleb Williams Dorian singer Mario Williams on the triple What a case so far Mitch Congrats, buddy She's a massive hit right there, dude massive hit Holy cow, dude get that into a mag for you for sure two big Caleb's now Good Lord, what a case man Grand Merch's one of five as well for all other Florida. Good gosh, man That's sick. That one's really freaking Round four snow blowing done good Lord took Brock power studio stars And gold drew our 27 to 50 for Penn State No, I think it's the whenever somebody follows. We have like a follow That's what I'm saying Zach. It's good man. It is a very good product Devon leary refractor Gold is Keon Keely 47 to 50 Time space intersection That is to 150 Devon leary pink to a hundred Mario Williams Grats on that one. It might be every time somebody follows on twitch as well or subs on twitch Grats on that USC Brock Bowers to 99 for Georgia That is down Hayden refractor for Ohio State grads OSU Got orange KJ Jefferson for Arkansas 25 second pretty decent KJ Jefferson auto we pulled and then I go up Oh my god another Caleb Williams, dude. Good Lord Unbelievable unbelievable Grats on that one at their USC Mitchell again congrats Mitch. Yeah, no, I got you Mitch for sure Like I said, just make sure you do it always be signed in always make sure you sign in whenever you Whenever you buy on the site and save you money down the line Save me money bow next to 25 Elements of the game. I guess so man, especially in this case. It's been nuts third Caleb Williams, right? Yeah Dante more to 25. Yeah, it's been the orange over there as well. Yeah, yeah Dante more USC All right, got JJ McCarthy or fratty. We got a pre-play on the back here. Everybody. Hello for shanu 299 Cooper Lagos to 50 a Emmett Moorhead to 150 for BC yellow Casey Thompson to 75 all other First auto is Nick Singleton elements of the game 11 to 75 for Penn State congrats on that Penn State Very nice. We've got a Mecca and Boca going to Ohio State again Just returned to Ohio State and Then a Jackson Dart one of one printing play for Ole Miss nasty dude. Let's go Thank You Vinny picking up a spot in Picking up Notre Dame in the next one. Appreciate you buddy We're down to just two to go Ole Miss and Arkansas two to go Ole Miss and Arkansas Which both have done very well in this case Arkansas is at 2 KJ Jefferson's 50 in lower auto and then US or Ole Miss just hit the Jackson Dart Quinchon Judkins also available for to be hit for Ole Miss Shats also Jason does bring up a pretty good point there That is for USC Caleb Williams running it back. That is Michael Williams 8 of 10 Nice one there Bronson Baron refractor to 75 a rendez-gazden To 150 Justice Ellison for Wake Forest Pink Lava Mackay lemon to 100 for USC Orange Blake Corum to 25 Congrats, Michigan fair Jordan Travis. There you go FSU. Oh Stud oh my god, dude orange 25 at 25 Roman Dune's a Michael Penic jr. He's dual auto the third multi auto of the case so far good god man Holy cow Michael H selling us out on the day Michael. Thank you buddy Ole Miss and Arkansas off the board Michael His products nuts man But no you're smart Mitch Mitch said Caleb is usually good for about one a case and the floor is pretty safe and smart It's smart with USC nice when they're all you also picked up all other schools Thank You Michael appreciate you buddy, and then Mario Williams to 25 Yes, they are Vinnie, but let's go is our short printed. Yes, they are six to 25 See if they have thank you Richard with a bunch of spots today appreciate your buddy Yeah, that's like the one kind of meh. I Agree with that Kailin DeBoer On the cusp of getting the damage job, huh? Where's he again right now? Kailin DeBauer or DeBoer? Oh the Washington guy. Yeah, okay. That makes sense. I Don't know his name to be honest. I know what he looked like. I didn't know that was a name Yeah, I wouldn't shock me if he should probably should get the damage That is a Malachi Starks for Georgia on the Wanton Yeah, flawless collegiate is fun for sure Victor greed on that Mackay lemon 15 of 15 USC We've got Dorian singer refractor green to 99 ties Simpson Got to 150 a rendez-gazden all other red Richard Reese red lava one of five going all other Rats on that Mackay lemon to 100 pink lava first auto is March on Lloyd orange going to USC Yeah, no for sure for sure. That's what's his name is staying in FSU or FSU darkest hunter 29 and 50 Rats on that Auburn and then Brock Bowers. There you go, Georgia. Nice one there at UGA a Bunch more spots coming in for this stuff tonight as well. Everybody. Thanks again. They can force life easier Yeah, USC is USC is very prominent in this for sure It's a sticky here go for this is a thickie tizzy thickie Could be nuts Fusion Mason Smith and Harold Perkins. So again, that is no random on that one that will go to LSU and Gold bucky Irving to 50 for Oregon. All right. We got Troy Franklin Jutepeon Sanders gold for Texas Audra Gaston made to 150 that'd be sick dude mech egg bouquet to 100 299 Nick singleton first auto is Jack Sawyer That will be going to Ohio State. Nice one there OSU.  Yeah, no, I ate that leave us alone, bro Nice duty of stars Caleb Williams rounds off to 50 45 to 50 We got Harold Perkins to 50 LSU John Reese Plumlee refractor for UCF Bucky Irving to 150 Oregon 275 Keon Keely for Alabama they started at 5 p.m. Eastern time bang bang green mini diamonds Blake Corum to Michigan Blue to 150 Thai Simpson Yeah, nice Sam Hartman 28 of 75 going to Notre Dame on the masterpieces Got gold 20 to 50 Brock Bowers for Georgia That's UGA and then Travis Hunter. There you go again. Mr. Jason with Colorado very nice Give Matt a second to catch up and then we will do the recap.  So there you go, man. Nice one there, buddy Thank you. Thank you Sean D with a prism spot Got oranges Blake Corum to 25 bow Knicks Dorian singer Drew Aller Blake Shepin to 15 Mackay lemon to 10 Michael Williams and to five Richard Reese Autos Jack Sawyer Jordan Travis Dallin Hayden a Drew Pine Jared verse twice The 75 now Sam Hartman Nick Singleton to 50 Brock Bowers Jarkez Hunter Frank Gore Jr. Ricky white Kj. Jefferson to 25 Marshawn Lloyd Mario Williams Kj. Jefferson Devon Leary Ricky white Graham Mertz to five one-of-one printing plate Jackson Dart patch outers Travis Hunter play Corum Brock Bowers Mecca Egbuca Caleb Williams and Kate Clubnick to 49 and then Mags cars Thank you, sir really just nuts dude actually kind of a nuts case for mags Caleb Williams to 25 Had a duel of Travis Hunter and Shadr to 25 Had a duel to 25 Michael Panix and Roman Dunze and Then a triple to five Caleb Williams Dorian singer and Mario Williams for USC on real man. That'll do for the break everybody. Thanks again for the fill number eight coming up now