 If you look at rappers, their success rate. How hard is to become successful as a street artist within music that's already hard and then the additional difficulties of being a street artist, right? Having to look over your shoulders, having a higher insurance to pay venues, having venues that don't want your ass to be there. All these additional things that come with being that. And then we're, yes, shining a light that yes, this person can make it out, but shouldn't we show other ways that niggas can make it out? What up, what up, what up? I'm Brandman Sean. I'm Cory. We are back with another episode of No Labels, Necessary Podcast. You can catch us every Tuesday, every Thursday on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, whatever you stream your podcast, here at the intersection of creativity and currency. This is No Labels. Today, we're gonna talk about the influence of music on culture and how you can use that for yourself. Cory's gonna violate one of our Black Kings, but first, we gotta talk about the gift and curse of rap music in a real way, courtesy of some commentary from Jidd's manager, Barry Hefner. If rap music has a 23 year old, $200 million man ready to lose it all, what do you think it's gonna do to these kids to have nothing? This is a quote from Barry Hefner, manager of Jidd asking, for real? Like literally, we've seen a basketball player in real time. If y'all don't know, John Morant is out here doing some things, putting his basketball career at risk. $200 million man, based on rap music. It's pretty clear. Like a lot of times we can say, oh, you don't know where the influence came from. NBA young boy, straight up, right? And this is where we go back to our conversation on the gift and curse of hip hop. Rap to be specific, because we know that all of hip hop, hip hop has started in a pretty positive place. And then we know how rap evolves and became a certain culture. So we know the part we're talking about. For those of y'all who like, oh, all the rap, all the hip hop. No, let's get to the real conversation. Let's not have any distractions. If rap music has a 23 year old, $200 million man in the NBA who is not from the streets, streets, streets for real, right? Not living that day to day. It doesn't mean that he doesn't know anybody. Doesn't have any friends who have been about that life or done some, you know what I mean? Sketchy things, some illegal things. But if you have a guy who's can't keep himself from holding the gun on live, goes on live, holds the gun up, does a lot of other things. We're not gonna get into all that other stuff. Get suspended for this shit, comes back. And then basically a few weeks later, does the same shit. Where is that influence coming from? Clearly rap music. So we wanna talk about this conversation that Barry Hefner so beautifully eloquently put out there. He said, I wouldn't be who I am if I didn't personally express myself and ask questions surrounding the business and culture of which I love and dedicate most of my time to. And I think that's an important part. I love this shit. I spend time in this shit, right? Know what it can do. We do as well, right? But I know what it can do. I posted this tweet yesterday and it sparked all types of responses versus from are we in the 90s again too? But they didn't wanna have this combo, but they don't wanna have this combo, which is a real thing. I feel like a lot of us don't wanna have that conversation. But my question is geared towards the quick kids. I think what puzzles me most as much as we benefit from this fruit bearing tree of rap and the culture to act like there isn't any social responsibility that also comes with it is crazy to me. We can't say that rap is the most influential genre of music and then denies influence on the youth. Exactly, right? We can't say music is marketing. Music is one of the most powerful ways to influence culture and then be like, well, you know, it doesn't affect kids. It doesn't affect people in general. I remember seeing DJ Embi say that shit one time, like saying that the music doesn't, like didn't affect him, da, da, da, and it doesn't really affect people, it's all on them. Look, I am 1,000% the self-accountability man. However, part of the accountability is understanding that you can put people in an environmental state, in a mental state to have a harder time to reap the benefits of accountability, to even understand what accountability is, what the right actions are. Why will we start our people like behind the finish line? No, not behind the finish line, behind the start line. In a lot of cases, that's what we're doing. Now, of course, I love rapper, I'm not saying get rid of rapper, but this is just like straight facts, right? Marketing is marketing, right? And I feel like if you, like most people, most rap music fan listeners, if you really think about it, you can think about a time when the music either personally affected you and your life choices or the life choices around you, right? Like I grew up and watched Young GZ made a group of adults want to vote for Obama, you know what I'm saying? Yes. You know what I'm saying? Like he literally changed the entire political narrative, one song, right? We can't deny that. Like I remember being a 16-year-old and listening to Mari Wilde by Kid Cudi for the first time and thinking like, man, I can't wait till I smoke with you one day, right? Because he made that shit sound crazy in the music. I was like, damn, he's having fun and he's living ethereally and shit. Juice World told Future, yo, bro, you had me on the lane. Yeah, he did say that. Yeah. And so I think, you know, what gives me what rap sometimes is that we will acknowledge the positive influences, like I said, but we brag about the GZ and Obama then. That's a big win for rap culture to this day. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm president is black, my Lambo's blue. Shout out to hanging the business. Can't even vote yet. I don't think I could. I don't think I could vote yet. Nah, you couldn't. Yeah, I couldn't. We brag about the positive influences. We deny the negative influences. But technology is one and you have to acknowledge others, right? It's good and bad that comes with influence through the white. Yeah. And so, yeah, I don't know, man. That's why whenever people make the argument that it doesn't, oh, what kind of idiot would listen to the rapper? What kind of idiot would fall prey to the stuff they send to music? It's like, yo, 13-year-old idiot. You know what I'm saying? Yo, 10-year-old idiot. Mike, you know what I'm saying? Mike, let's do some shit. But even he used the example of John Morant. But I went to a private college. I went to a private college with a kid with a lot of very affluent black people and people and people. And I was saying, them motherfuckers, motherfuckers come from, you know what I'm saying? Two-parent household, you know what I'm saying? Million-dollar income parents, crazy businesses. And they emulate in the same shit they hear in music, right? Because the culture is the culture, right? So that's why I say, bro, we all at this point have enough examples, real world, personal and around us, real world, where we know this is a fact. This is the shit that's always irked me. I've said this before, right? I grew up in a certain neighborhood, had family in certain neighborhoods and from certain places. And I don't put myself off the beat of most street nigga in the world, the worst environment in the world. But there were other people. Matter of fact, I didn't even ever look at any of the places I came up in and ass-hooded into other niggas that their parents can't go there, you know what I'm saying? Like, for real, because I went to a school at one point, I got shipped across town, right? And it was my first prince water. Yeah, in ways, for real. For real, right? Got shipped across town, went to school though. It was not like one of those, hey, I go to get shipped across town and I'm only with white people. Got shipped across town, one of those all cultures, but it was like a whole bunch of smart black people that got shipped across town. But most of them got shipped across town from a different side of town than I was. And I was like, dang, they even got two-parent households. To me, that was like, oh, these niggas got two parents and all these niggas got some pretty big houses which aren't that big in hindsight, all right? And I'll be looking at these people who are in better environments than me act as if they were related to the things from where I'm from way more than I am, right? It was confusing as fuck. But that was rap music. That's what it did. To me, it's like, oh yeah, this might be my real life. I don't know, some of these niggas y'all talking about are actually my brother's friends or something like that type of shit, right? Family friends and things that, unfortunately passed and things like that because of the gangs being a part of the gangs that they were called out. And I just didn't understand this shit. It's like, nigga, from all I know, niggas are trying to get out of this shit. Most people don't really wanna go into it. But I feel like rap music started that space where people from outside of it saw the romanticization of it so much, right? We started to put it on a pedestal to street shit specifically. And that's where the damage came from. So that's the critique, like Barry said, you can love something dearly and still be conscious and critical of it at the same time, like, bruh, how can we navigate this? Because we do want the opportunities for the people who are from that environment and can make it out with music. We want them to make it out with music. And we want them to share their stories. And we want them to share their stories, right? But I don't know, do we want them to share our stories? When we look at the macro, I'm not saying personally that's how I feel now, but when we look at that macro of the actual impact, sharing the story is still marketing. That's the problem with marketing. Marketing happens whether you want it or not. Me saying, yo, I slit my arm, right? Because I felt bad. That's marketing to somebody else that, yo, when you feel bad, slit your arm. It's not a natural thing to do certain things just because you feel a certain way. It becomes a common thing. And I'm gonna do this because I'm depressed. Oh, I saw my dad drink when he was going through certain shit. And now I'm drinking because I'm feeling the same way that I saw him feel like all of that shit is like just exposure. Marketing is simply the exposure at the end of it. There are strategies to channel the impact of it, but all of this shit is marketing, right? So we look at somebody being successful as an artist, sharing their story. The story might be that of a struggle that people outside the hood can't relate to, right? Not that only people in the hood are the only ones who struggle, but you get what I'm talking about the more. One is the impact. We see somebody doing some stupid shit. And first of all, let's stay on job and rent for a second before we get to the other part. Bro, the reaction from people on job and rent is so crazy because so many people, it's just like nigga. That's really what it comes down to. It's one of those collectives like, bro, we can't really say shit. Like again, I can't tell you how many people experienced it, just how I did it. Where I was at my homeboy proposed, we were at his like the after party, I guess you call it. It was Mother's Day dinner. And his brother-in-law was like, man, bro, this man, job, man. Like they was just spending him. And I'm like, they said spending him, they just now suspended him from that shit that he did. Like a couple of months ago or whatever, they're like, that's late. That's weird. And I thought he was already out. And he's like, no, he did some other shit. Like what do you mean he did some other shit? Like yesterday, the same shit yesterday? Like this doesn't make or the day before yesterday was like, it's like what? And everybody pretty much had that same thing. Like what do you mean? You know, he already did that way. He did the exact same thing, not something else, the exact same thing. I thought that shit was dangerous. I was like, man, is the clip going viral again? And yes, my homie was saying something. Oh, this is happening. I was like, oh, okay. This is a brother. So after that, you're just like, how? Why? You can't make sense of it. Cause it's too soon right after, right? So. No lesson learned. Then somebody, somebody was like, yeah, man. He's an NBA young boy fan. That says it all. Look, I'm not gonna call that fuck. And I say that cause I don't really know. I know a lot of them. I don't know a lot of them personally. I see them online, but you know, I don't know many personally in that specific younger age group, right? Get to talk to. Are you angry? A lot of pent-up aggression in that fan base. We get a lot of music today. Like, you know, that does that. So we go through the era of the depressing music and you see all these people be depressed, right? Be sad and do emo shit and all those type of things. You have the angry music and you see people doing this shit. That's a clear example of music is marketing. Steve Stout will tell you that there are cultural things that you can, you can assume from music. You can look at music and almost use that as, that is set to see how people are gonna vote, right? See how people are gonna buy. All that is influence. It's reason that niggas wanna put their bottles in an artist's video. It's reasons that they put their clothes on artists. They want artists to talk about all this shit, right? It's a reason that all that stuff exists. So we know it's marketing straightforward. Getting back to the street thing. We talked about this right before the pie and we're not probably gonna put out the talk where we talked about this earlier either. But we had a conversation. And it's just like, I don't know. It's just been too long. I feel like I don't want it to go out. But we're gonna, so we just gonna have it right here. The conversation. But if you look at rappers, right? Their success rate, all right? You look at music in general, the success rate. How hard it is to become successful as an artist. How hard it is to become successful as a street artist, specifically within music that's already hard. And then the additional difficulties of being a street artist, right? Having to look over your shoulders. Having a higher insurance to pay venues. Having venues that don't want your ass to be there. All these additional things that come with being that, right? Cool. And then we're, yes, shining a light that yes, this person can make it out. But shouldn't we show other ways that niggas can make it out? Because that's one of the hardest fucking ways to make it out. We're leading people down a road of such low probability. And when you look at those rankings, which we talked about earlier, that came out when they said that Indian Americans, I forgot all the rankings down. But it was the ones that basically came up with Ebony K. Williams and Charlotte Mann. And I'm talking about when Ebony says she don't want to marry a bus driver and she wants to hold blacks to the highest standard, right? Indian Americans were like 119,000 as their median income for some shit in America, average salary, something like that. Or household income. One of those numbers, I think black people were around like 28,000. White people were not at the top. Which is a whole another conversation. Because always talk about focus. Like when you know how hard you can focus and then other shit can happen around and you miss everything going on around. And there comes a point where black people are focused on white people so much that they're forgetting that there's other people in the world, other things going on, everybody else leveling up and you forgetting about your own shit, right? I'm making money too. Because we watching their ball so hard, right? Keep your eyes on your own page. But like to that point, they have what? The doctors, the lawyers, the engineer, those typical jobs that we hear like the stereotype, oh, I'm not one of these. My parents aren't going to be happy about it. We hear the same thing with Nigerians and many other people that immigrate to America, right? They go for those primary jobs. Why? Because there's a higher success rate. There are systems that are already built. As an artist, you got to pave your own fucking way. So when we talk about rap or go to the league, nigga, that's hard as fuck, right? Going to the league, low as probability. We might represent most of the league, but still it's so few of us. And then being an artist in general is hard. Being a street artist, again, as I already said earlier, is even harder, especially the conditions of it. So like showing such limited and difficult to achieve ways of success when other people can be average in another field and live a better lifestyle is worse for the community on a macro level. I know we want to have our expression. I know we are creative. That is something that we have. We grade at it. We are extremely innovative. We're extremely innovative. But through that, we still have to look at the whole, what's great for the macro of the community and are these images the best images? These are the questions that we don't like to talk about, right? On the open platforms and just put out there. And because you see how quickly it goes from just this, what's the influence of rap to here's all these other factors. And this is kind of what the fucking influence looks like. And then how hard is it? So outside of people trying to be something that they're not that's already going to put them in more danger because there are other options. There's also, well, shit, trying to be that thing that they're not, not only puts them more danger, it's hard to be successful if they really see that or the other people who are truly in the position, the only way we're giving them to see out or the way that we're marketing the most for them to get out is actually the hardest way for them to get out, right? Quick second, have you ever seen an artist catch some traction and then they start to move? The numbers start to grow. They might even go viral. But then fast forward a year from now, somehow their numbers haven't really grown that much. They drop back close to the same monthly listeners they had before the traction and viral moment. Well, that's because you have to know how to convert those moments into careers. And we've done this again and again with not only songs, but artists. And so has J.R. McKee who's been a part of helping artists like Lil Durk, Rod Wave, Justin Scott, and Money Long. And we just did a collab where J.R. McKee does a step-by-step breakdown of how he took Money Long from zero to millions of monthly listeners and winning a Grammy over Beyoncé, Mary J. Blize, and Jasmine Sullivan. Check out this breakdown while we still have it up. You can check it out at www.brandmannetwork.com slash Grammy. Don't forget the www or it won't work. Again, that's www.brandmannetwork.com slash Grammy. Back to the video. So before we continue this conversation, we're gonna play this quick clip from NBA Young Boy. I'm not gonna lie, some of y'all might have difficulty understanding it, so J.Cory's gonna interpret. Shit I spoke about, look at this shit I put in these people ears. Man, I feel very wrong about a lot of things. How many lives I actually am responsible for when it comes to my music? How many kids and people have gotten in the car or put this shit in their ears and actually when it hurts someone and now I'm sitting back like damn, I can't do it all in one day but I promise to clean whatever I can clean but it's gonna take time. What are you talking about, Corry? Come on, Corry. So what he's saying here is that, you know, he was once foolish and never really considered the impact that his music was having on the lives of others but as of lately he realizes, you know, that hey, there are people, you know, making bad decisions, doing bad things while listening to me and now I vow to do all that I can to change that impact and be a better influence for the world. I once was lost, now how? But now I see, these niggas doing fuck shit because of me, that's what he's saying. And I feel like that's a, I don't know, man. I always wonder at what point do artists realize it? Like how many people does it take for you to talk to or see results from before you thought it would go like, damn, man, my shit is influencing people, you know? Cause I would think, cause that clip looks like it couldn't have been no longer than a year and you knew exactly what I was like but you've been in there young boy for a minute, you know? So you just, it's just like- Well, so your credit, before we got on the pie, you talked about him being on house arrest for a minute. So maybe he weren't outside to see in his case. I think I was on, you got Instagram. It could have been said this. No, but- I ain't just dissed that call. That's a whole nother story. That's a whole nother conversation. So are you on dissed the solution? The, you know, I would use the artist like him because those artists like J. Cole are kind of like the other side of the spectrum, right? Like maybe had similar experiences, didn't choose to walk the same path that you, but finds a way to relay the message, tell the story, but still push it towards a more positive message, right? Cause to the point you made earlier about, you know, storytelling instead of marketing and it's been documented for thousands of years that story form is the best form of marketing, right? Storytelling is the best form of marketing because it's a way for me to entertain you and get you to at least stick around for whatever message I want you to catch from, right? You at least gonna ride the wave and eventually that wave gonna take you to the point that I want you to go through. So that's why I bought the point like, you know, I think like there's room for them to tell the stories. There's room for, you know, the stories to influence the culture in a different direction. It always just kind of comes down to delivery, right? Like I said, like two artists can have the exact same thing. We both could grow up in a fucked up neighborhood have almost not made it out, you know what I'm saying? Walk a very similar path until the split in the road kind of happens and like, hey, you're gonna almost go glorify it and make it look cool or make it look fun. I'm going to talk about the real aspect of it. Now, what I do think the downside of it has kind of come to is that rappers more mainstream now, right? So whereas I think there were people who used to make the argument that rap and hip hop were stories from the people in the culture meant to kind of go back to the people in the culture is now reached far beyond the black culture, right? So now there are people who are just in it for the entertainment value of it, right? It's like going to a museum. Like I like going to museums. I'm like, oh, let me look at this ancient, you know, feudalism Japanese art and look at the shit they was making while they was cutting each other's heads off and putting them on pipes. I don't have any desire to go back in time and see that, right? But I look at music to sound like that. Kids who listen to this like, damn, that's what's going on on the other side of the tracks. Damn, that's crazy, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, and then there's now just a larger percentage of them who pick it up because like I said, it's mainstream culture now. Like it looks cool, you know what I'm saying? Like we pay attention to the, to your point, to the top point, oh, 1% of people that make it through that to become mainstream, they do make it look fun. You know what I'm saying? They make it like you just hanging out with your homies all day making money and every now and again a nigga talk shit and you gotta take them out. You know what I'm saying? It feels like a big game to a group of people who don't have the inner culture knowledge to understand what the bigger message is. Inner culture knowledge, huge. I was watching an interview with Rich Paul. It was like the rap radar. Yeah, bruh, you really just called Rich Paul or Dale's boyfriend? Get the fuck out of here, bruh. Yo, nigga, you trolling the shit out of me, bruh. Come on, don't do this to this great black man. Nah, nah, I thought Rich Paul, man. Don't do this to this great black man. I thought Rich Paul was on YouTube, man. I thought Rich Paul was on YouTube, bruh. Don't do this to this great black man. Yo, but nah, bruh, this, I connected when this man said, cause he said something I always say. He said that the agents and shit, right? They be saying some fuck shit. They be doing some crazy things, right? And the interviewer, I think it was Elliot, he might've been being dot basically acts, like does he do some of the similar tactics or does he get back in them in that way, whatever. And he was like, I don't do those same things because I come from an environment where doing certain things has a consequence. So you're just trained in a certain way. Even if you know this is a different environment, it's really hard to adjust from that. And it's the same way. I don't do certain shit. And I don't talk about certain shit. Like some of these stories that niggas talk about because just because it's popular in blogs and hip hop, like I just cannot do it because I am now inserting myself in some shit and being inserted in any way. I now like see the dominoes that would be in my mind, my fault, cause I know how it worked. But then you look at some other people who are like, like I always say, like the white journalists that go into oblock, right? They just do it as a, you know what I mean? Like for me, like you have to have a certain ignorance to be able to do it in the way that they do it. As a true, like with a true passion, with a true like smiling face, right? And think it's cool. Unfortunately, I mean, unfortunately, I guess fortunately for them in this case, there's like this divide kind of how Nipsey said many times we're looking for people that like, they look like us and hurting ourselves. So there's like this weird line of protection many of them have, but that was kind of one of the things that was weird on the rise of like academics when he was talking about the Chicago shit, right? It's like there had to be a disconnect of not knowing what it comes with. Like he had to not come from a certain environment to just do that. It was hard to see him from coming or being around certain things and doing that. Cause I don't think he seemed just as innocent as many of those other journals that goes in when he was doing it and then learned over time. But the point is, again, yeah, that's that training. But when you have people from, like don't come from certain environments and we're marketing this to him now all of a sudden, like even our own, it could be black cause every black person isn't from the hood. Let's be clear. And we don't want them to all be from the hood. They don't understand the rules. They come in, they do shit and act shit. Thinking it's all fun and games. I'm gonna go to this party. I'm gonna go to this club over in this space cause I heard it's hard over there. I've seen there's people I went to school with that I saw ruin their entire life. And they were on a path and they had an education. They were smart as fuck, but they wanted to show themselves to be something that they weren't. And it was very clear. And their whole, the whole thing was like, and this is like in seventh grade where we could be like, bro, like, why are you being so fake? Why are you being so fake? By 11th grade, your life is ruined, right? I've seen that shit over and over again. Yeah. Yeah. I think too, cause you said something that made me think about something, right? Like thinking about people who are outside of the culture that like I said, really just consuming entertainment. There's no different than going to the movies and watching like Shadows 4 or something for them, right? Like listen to a new NBA Young Boy song. And there's a situation now that has made me think of where there's a YouTuber named Trap Lord Ross who went viral recently for making like this documentary style video on King Von, right? And King Von's people are pressing him like, yo, why'd you put this out? Why'd you put this stuff on? He's like, well, I mean, I'm not doing anything but going through his public tweets and public information. See, that said shit so initially, it's like. But to your point, right? It's like going back to the music is kind of went beyond just a cultural thing and now it's being consumed by people who don't understand the culture of workings. That King Von's people are looking at like, yo, you talking about this thing a lot like that? There are real families of people to be affected by it. Yeah. To Trap Lord Ross's content. You know what I'm saying? It's like, bro, you talked about it. You put it out there, you know what I'm saying? Like don't be... Your life is content. Yeah, like you can't put it out there to that degree and then be upset when a fan finds enough interest in it to do a deeper dive than maybe anybody else has decided. Maybe even the police have decided to do, right? Like that comes with you putting out your story and putting out your narrative, right? Like he's gonna hit somebody. It hits a bunch of such a smile as big as King Von and Dirk and all of them. Like it hits a bunch of people and the decisions made from listening to that should often a thousand different directions, right? His direction just, the direction he chose is happening to come back and fuck you up, you know what I'm saying? But it's like, there are so many different, like so many risks that come with the rise. Like you have the cultural impact, like we talked about, you have the out of cultural impact that comes from it, right? Like perceptions from other groups of people and the decisions they make around you or to you because of that type of things, right? And then you have like the fan impact and like what the fans decide to do with that, the information that you give them and like, I don't think a lot of artists think about like bro, like to the average music consumer, like your fans are a reflection of you because I'm assuming that this person likes you probably listen to you a lot, you know what I'm saying? Watch this. I'm like, yo, brother, if I'm watching your music, make 17 year old kids, white kids while out, I'm assuming you a wild individual, you know what I'm saying? Like, are you saying some wild shit? You know what I'm saying? And I'm gonna have a certain procession of you from a fan standpoint and a business standpoint to the point you made earlier, right? Like now I'm like, bro, I've seen what your fans look like at fucking rolling loud. I don't want nothing to do with you. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's up in my building, fucking shit up. Hell no, I know you can't get the sponsorship deal. But I don't think those are things that get thought about when the artist lives the experience they have, right? Which is they can't, they can only do so much about it in certain instances, right? They live the experience that they have, they put it on wax, they put it out. And then at that point they can't control what happens exactly, what happens from it. And we see the backlash is coming in a bunch of different ways. And I just, I don't think enough artists either they don't think about that or they don't care about it. Cause it is very rare that the consequences of an artist's music reaches them. We have a handful of examples of music. Tupac, King Von, Land Juice World, you know what I'm saying? All of music history, it might be like 40, you know what I'm saying? It creates news, you're attracting energy. Again, back to the people of then you're not wanting those people to be out. Cause it really don't even matter having insurance or not. When you get to a certain age, bro, you got your life that you moving along. Like you really don't want to use your insurance. It don't matter if a nigga can bump my car and I can have somebody pay for it. Even if I'm not injured or nothing like that. It's like, I don't want to go through the trouble of waiting for the shop to do my shit. Like I don't want to go through the trouble of waiting for somebody to fix my venue and all this stuff. So people will avoid those problems if they can. But it comes down to this. Music, no, I'll start with stories. Cause you mentioned storytelling, like again and again over time, since the beginning of time, right? This is how we've shared and moved information along. Information gets moved along just by speaking communication. But a story is captivating. Sound, music is hypnotic. You put that shit together, the influence is profound, bro. Like you can't like ignore the impact that that has. Artists are creating little thems, right? Little soldiers as people listen. This is why you'll have people do stuff like the back of the day. People probably still do shit like this. You know, you go to sleep and put some headphones on and have like a self affirmation thing playing or something like that. Waking up and now my subconscious has been affected. You can say, oh yeah, I'm not a little kid. But if I consume this type of content day in, day out, it's going to impact me in some way. I might not go out and slap somebody without any, you know, need for them to be slapped without any kind of violation. I might not go shoot somebody, but it's going to impact me in some way. That's just like universal law of physics. Yeah, yeah. I mean, let's talk about to the point, man. I do think fans are part of the problem is too, because to the point you made really early in this video, most people aren't willing to admit that they've been influenced by music to that degree. It's like, they almost see it as weak, you know what I'm saying? But then to your point, it's like, no, we all, no, you made a point on a different episode. It's like, bro, at some point we all get got, like you consume enough of the world, you can't dodge and deflect all the marketing that comes your way. Can't, bro, it's too much of it. Some of it going to hit you, man. It's like, you know, people that disagree with that, I would encourage you to think about like, what was the first song that, like I said, maybe you want to do some type of drug. What's the first song that made you want to drink? What's the first song that made you want to have sex? What's the first song that made you want to go to a particular place? We all have some type of example of that, that it might not always be as extreme or profane or something, but there's an example of something in your life that like you heard in a song that made you like, damn, I want to try that or I want to do that. And that is- I want to get some torque to that song. Yeah, man, I want to, never mind. But you know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? But it's like, we all have an example where the PG are not aware. Like I gave my example. Like I said, I remember, I mean, the first time I heard it in my life, I was like, I'm smoking weed. I'm in the countries. I ain't know what to get it. I'm like, as soon as I figure out what to get it and trying that shit, this shit sounds crazy. Like he's humming these melodies and shit and he's probably high. This will be in a high field. Like I want to be high. I remember me thinking that. Like I can remember me thinking that so vividly. And it's like, you know, like I said, there's other like PG versions of like, I learned about our investment from Jay-Z and what more. I never really thought about it and to listen to that, but it put it in my head and I did my research. I'm like, oh, this is what the game was like, right? And that's because it was Jay-Z lyric, you know what I'm saying? So I was like, they're good and bad examples of it. You know what I'm saying? On both sides. And it goes back to the point I made. Like we are willing as a culture to acknowledge and even celebrate the positive winds that come from music, you know what I'm saying? And influence. Then we have to at least acknowledge and be ready to fix the negatives that come from it as well. Cause like I said, you can't really have one without another. You can mitigate one and increase the other, but you can't really have one without the other. Bro, I think you can have one without the other. Ain't music? I think not 100% less for that one. Yeah, I remember I got 10. But the proportions can be way better. Cause you look at other people's music. I mean, you look at our music before hip hop. The music doesn't have to be the primary pusher of this specific part of our culture. The problem with rap, right? The way it's been overtaken is not that it's been used to share stories and allow people to see inside that world. It's the fact that it's gotten to a point where black culture is synonymous with street culture, right? And that's not the fucking truth. It shouldn't be. But somehow you got people who are not from the street trying to buy their life by street coals. Now there's some coals that, hey, bro, as far as I'm concerned, that shit just translate. I don't understand why you would be any other way. But there's some things that are street specific, you know what I'm saying? That doesn't make sense for you. You really shouldn't even notice shit like that, bro. Like the fact that it exists. You only know it because of the music. And you only know it because of the music. And now you're trying to judge your blackness, your realness based off of these things that don't even apply to the environment that you're in. Street niggas will tell you in the 90s when they start getting in these boardrooms, they were confused as fuck. Like the way some of these people were acting, some of the things that they were doing, da, da, da. And they're like, usually that shit will get you killed, right? And that will be like the stuff that it will say, right? It's a different environment. And the ones who had won, they were like, I had to adjust. You already are being trained in an environment that's closer to what works in most of the world in terms of success, money, business. Doesn't mean that none of the, again, we know there's a backstab and all these, but it works in a different way. There's different types of consequences. Yet you're spending all this time doing a deep dive and trying to abide by things that are the opposite, the things that they have to train themselves out of. And that's the confusion, bro. Like street culture is something that exists within black culture. Everybody has a street culture, you know, a criminal culture within their community. Like it's not just us. And that's the thing. When we get to the point where we're thinking like, black people are like the hardest people because they got, because we got hood people. Like everybody else don't got hood people. And then you also, people have like people in the hood are like the hardest people in the world. Like niggas, people in the hood are getting their ass beat. There's people in the hood, you know what I'm saying? There's people in the hood that's gonna lose to some country white boy in a fight or whatever. Or it can't shoot as well. Cause there's a lot of niggas in the hood that don't use a gun right. You know what I'm saying? Not better than a country white boy, man. Hey, bro, like, so there's like, there's all these things like and assumptions that we have. And we've built the street rapper into a super thug, as Nori would say, right? Made this a superhero. And that's part of the problem, right? And not part of the problem in terms of watching a movie, right? Part of the problem in terms of kids wanting to be that. Right, because it's been so admired and put on such a fucking pedestal where you got all these other cultures. Like they know it exists, but they're trying to separate it. Like the Italians, like they're trying to separate themselves from the mafia also in that shit. We like uphold the Italian mafia. Like you look at all these niggas who got names based on Italian movies and shit like that, right? Like, every culture has it. We are, I don't want to say the only ones, but in America specifically, right? We put them on a higher pedestal or allow them to be put on that part of our culture, put on a higher pedestal and represent our culture, not just to ourselves, but the world as a greater representation than the other parts of our cultures, which other cultures don't do. And let's be clear. The world is a problem. I don't like that we put that as a representation of ourselves. Will you allow that to be a representation of ourselves to the world? And I know there's other factors and there might be some malice and conspiracy that goes into it, cool. But the more important part is us using that, allowing that to represent ourselves to ourselves. Because it's about us first and that's moving however we move. You can't allow, you can't account for whatever some of these other people are going to do how they're going to perceive you. But we got to spread the most positive message. So this shit, again, it's a gift, we know, but it's also this weird curse. And I don't know how we work ourselves out of this space, but shit, like the job and rants of the world, man, is just like, he's one of those things where I think it's just never been such a clear, clear, simple, clean cut example where people are just out of it. Like there's not much argument where you're like, oh, y'all misunderstanding this man and you don't know where he came from. It's just like, bro, what are you doing? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. What are you doing? You know what I'm saying? But let's end this with a couple more statements from Barry and we can get up out of here. He said, I work in music every day and I'm not saying it's anybody's responsibility to watch a parent, your kids for you. Oh, that's what he said. I'm not saying it's anybody's responsibility to watch a parent, your kids for you, but you are a fool if you don't think outside influences affect kids' minds. And when you constantly listen to something repeatedly, it can affect mood and directions. All right? He really went in on his post and I want to give credence to all his words because he spent his time in some thoughtful shit here. There's data that doesn't show up on record label sheets but shows up in the fields of data to prove the effects of it. Music has been used in studies for social development. It has been known to increase blood flow to brain regions that generate and control emotions. Music is spiritual. It's ability to spread across nations and bring people together, shows music's capabilities. And if we say it can change the world, then it definitely can have an effect on people's behavior. Am I blaming artists for the right of self-expression and art? No, but if art imitates life and our number one expert in the black community is entertainment, that means we sell more life than any other culture. Bar, man, it was a bar. And it's largely considered quote unquote lifestyle music and I leave that to you smart people to draw your own conclusions. My only point was imagine what's it doing to the kids that don't have solid upbringing and that live in unstable environments? Just imagine, because we see like what is doing to people who have stable environments, right? That's broken through the whole family structure. Right, broken through the family structure of offense. Imagine what it's doing to people without that defense. You can love something that has both positive and negative outcomes. Sometimes we call that a relationship. But if we keep waiting on a machine, a label that takes responsibility for our culture and its output, then we're in trouble. The machine just gonna keep spreading the marketing money on whatever we keep co-signing. But hey, say what you want in the comments, I'm open to hear others' perspectives. Period. We can end it there. Yeah, we gotta get buried on here, man. Y'all spend buried comments, man. I don't know if you need to come on here. Either way, go. Appreciate the sauce, man. The thoughtfulness. One of my favorite posts I've seen around the job situation. And like I said, we've been talking about this behind the scenes on short spurts in the podcast in one way or another before this situation. And this situation just brings it all together beautifully. Let us know what you think on the topic. This is yet another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. I'm Brandon Sean. Cory and we out.