0:07

Welcome everybody to Crystal Kylan Friends. Today

0:09

we're going to be talking to Anthony

0:12

Fantano who's like the number one music

0:14

reviewer on YouTube. He's got a giant

0:16

channel. Wanted to talk to him specifically

0:18

about the Kendrick Lamar versus Drake

0:20

Beef. I've been obsessed with it. I've gone

0:22

down the rabbit hole. I've listened to all

0:25

of the songs. I'm curious his thoughts on

0:27

it. There's also like some political angles on

0:29

it too that you might miss if you're

0:31

only focused on the rap angle or whatever.

0:33

So really interested to have that conversation. That

0:36

should be good. Yeah. And I've

0:38

been vicariously living through

0:40

Kyle and learning about the Kendrick

0:42

beef through him and Ella. So

0:44

our daughter. Yeah, you've been forced. She's

0:46

been forced to like secondhand

0:48

smoke of the Kendrick Drake beef. But it really

0:51

is a huge short. Like I did

0:53

a search this morning on YouTube and

0:55

some of the first things that popped up were like PBS

0:58

covered it. PBS

1:00

did a little. Well, yeah, because

1:03

people it's like it's beyond hip hop. Like

1:05

it's become a bigger story. Yeah. I mean,

1:07

it's definitely reached like mainstream knowledge. We

1:09

got an AMA question about it over at

1:11

breaking points and we had Mac on cause

1:14

Mac's been following it really closely to like

1:16

break it. Here's how it started. And I

1:19

know enough, but I needed someone who actually like

1:21

knew the whole breakdown and has actually been following

1:23

it and had real opinions about it other than

1:25

me. It's so funny because I have

1:27

historically been the biggest Drake hater on the planet.

1:30

Right. But I feel like in this conversation I

1:32

come across as the Drake defender. Yeah.

1:34

Cause so many people are just on

1:37

Kendrick's nuts. It's become very one side

1:39

of the assessment of, uh, of who won

1:41

and who lost. There's been like pole like

1:43

you gov has done polls about it. There's,

1:46

there's no denying who won in the court

1:49

of public opinion, which you could argue is

1:51

the only court that matters. Yeah. Which

1:54

I mean, it is sort of funny because you

1:56

know, Drake's thing

1:59

is he's like the Very mainstream like

2:01

sort of corporate product and

2:03

so the fact that Kendrick beat him It's not surprising

2:05

like among your audience didn't you do a poll of

2:08

your audience? And it was like 88% said

2:10

Kendrick one and this was I think this was before Shit,

2:13

did I even do that poll before not like us

2:15

which was like the biggest one from Kendrick? I think

2:17

you might I think I might have which is like

2:19

if they're saying 88% then then now it's like 99

2:22

Yeah, I'm saying yeah, but I mean

2:24

it's the real like it wasn't guaranteed that it would go

2:26

that way I guess that's what I would say well

2:29

certainly not early on I will say this for him because

2:31

I got there's so much stuff I want to talk to

2:33

him about and ask him about and stuff But like early

2:35

on it was lopsided in the other direction and

2:38

the court of public opinion was like damn Kendrick He's

2:40

smoking you right now really that was before Kendrick dropped

2:42

anything Well, it was when it was totally

2:44

one side Drake was basically the only one out there like yeah

2:46

And he was like sort of taunting him in like

2:48

a fun way Yeah, you know on Instagram

2:50

with pushups drop and give me 50 like

2:52

when he's like drop drop drop that has

2:54

like a double meaning It's like drop

2:57

your song to attack me, but also drop and

2:59

give me 50 like some push-ups Which

3:01

is what you did on the video, and you know what

3:03

you do for top dog. Who's his like? friend

3:06

or manager really and You

3:09

know the idea is he's extorting you because he's taking so

3:11

much money from you So it was like I don't know

3:13

drink early on was like having fun with it I'm gonna

3:15

get a triple entendre working there yeah, but

3:17

you know that only lasted so long until Kendrick

3:19

released some fire So anyway, we'll get into

3:21

all that but before we do So

3:25

as you know crystal there's gonna be a debate Maybe

3:28

I mean it's still possible it falls apart

3:31

like you can't say well they could die It

3:35

could also I mean it you really put it

3:37

on the realm of possibility that Biden wouldn't pull some

3:39

like oh Trump did this And it's unacceptable and now

3:41

I'm not you know it's not worth meeting him on

3:43

the debate stage or whatever I'm just saying that it's

3:46

not done until they're both on the stage in my

3:48

opinion, okay? Well. It's scheduled for June 27th and

3:52

Joe Biden released a little video about this it's

3:54

funny because I saw a contradictory stuff yesterday first

3:57

I saw some tweets that were like there will

3:59

be no debate And it was

4:01

like some I forget what the backstory was, but basically

4:03

some people were like, it's not happening. And

4:06

then immediately after that, I keep scrolling and it's like

4:08

they agreed to a debate on June 27th. Yeah. So

4:10

Biden sort of threw the gauntlet down. He started

4:13

this conversation that led to them agreeing to

4:15

two debates. This is what he had to

4:17

say in this initial Twitter post. Donald Trump lost

4:19

two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hadn't

4:21

shown up for debate. Now

4:23

he's acting like he wants to debate me again. Well,

4:26

make my day, pal. I'll even do

4:28

it twice. So let's pick the

4:30

dates, Donald. I heard you're free on Wednesdays. I'll

4:33

even do it twice, Kyle. You had a strong reaction

4:35

to that line the first time we watched it. Well,

4:37

yeah, the reason why that annoyed me is because the

4:39

default for every presidential debate is three. Right. So

4:42

he makes it seem like I'm being a tough guy. I'll even

4:44

debate you twice. But in reality, what he's saying is I don't

4:46

feel like I can do it three times. So I'm going to

4:49

limit it to two, but try to spin that as if this

4:51

is me being tough. Yeah. So

4:53

it's just that's just a really weaselly thing to say.

4:55

And then the Wednesday thing, I think that's in relation

4:57

to his court cases, right? Yeah. What is

4:59

it? Trump has

5:01

Wednesdays off. That was just

5:03

like a throwaway, like taunt towards Trump. Yeah, to be like, you're

5:05

a criminal. Yeah, you're a criminal. But I think you should just

5:07

be like, you're a criminal. I don't think you should do the,

5:10

oh, Wednesday. I hear you're free on Wednesday. What perseions do people are going to

5:12

hear that and be like, I know what that means. The

5:15

morning Joe table roared with approval, I'm

5:17

sure, at that epic own of Donald

5:20

Trump. Yeah. I mean, there's so first

5:22

of all, if it does in fact

5:24

happen, which I think is more likely

5:26

than not, I'm glad. And

5:29

I was very concerned we wouldn't have any debates.

5:31

I mean, Biden obviously didn't debate his Democratic primary

5:33

opponents. Trump didn't debate his

5:35

Republican primary opponents. Biden

5:37

is really old and not all that with

5:40

it. And so there's a lot at risk

5:42

here. On the other hand, you

5:44

know, there's also the expectations for him are on

5:46

the floor. So the

5:48

speculation was, and I buy this,

5:50

that the reason he wants

5:53

these debates to be so early, which

5:55

this would be the earliest debate like

5:57

ever. And he won't even technically be

5:59

the Democratic nominee. Yeah, right when this happens,

6:01

which is kind of wild. But anyway, he

6:03

wants it early so that he has the

6:05

chance to outperform expectations and get a bump

6:07

in the polls. But if things

6:10

go really sideways for him, he loses all

6:12

you'll forget about her. There's time to recover. Yeah.

6:15

And, you know, he after state of the union,

6:17

I think it's reasonable to look at the polls

6:19

after his state of the union address and

6:21

say that he improved some. And

6:24

he does. I think he's

6:26

delusional about where the polls are currently. I

6:28

don't think he actually believes he's losing to

6:30

Donald Trump. But there was some reporting that

6:33

he's just like living in a fantasy land

6:35

about this. Right. But

6:37

clearly one of the core concerns for the American public

6:39

is like, can you literally do the job for four

6:41

years? So there is some pressure on him to be

6:43

able to go out and go toe

6:45

to toe with Trump and prove that he is,

6:47

you know, able to at least perform

6:49

moderately well in such circumstance. And it

6:52

is also true that certainly in the

6:54

first debate last time against him, he

6:56

did well, not because he did well,

6:58

but because Trump was so psycho and

7:00

aggressive and obnoxious that he

7:02

just sort of like destroyed himself in that first. Yeah.

7:05

So you stole one of my points when he said,

7:07

oh, you lost to me twice. You're

7:10

not giving all the context because to

7:12

your point, yeah, he lost to you.

7:14

The reason he lost to you, you

7:16

won by default because of sympathy, because

7:18

you look like a normal human and

7:20

he looked like an absolute psychopath. Right.

7:23

Yeah. That's the only reason you won is because people were like,

7:25

that guy seems relatively normal and that guy is screaming his fucking

7:27

head off. All mine had to do was like stand

7:29

there on the stage and let Trump be like,

7:31

it was unanimous. Everybody was like, Biden won because

7:33

he was just badgering him. And it wasn't the

7:36

kind of bet like there were instances in 2016

7:38

where Trump and Hillary debated where Trump did his

7:40

little badgering thing, but there was enough reeling it

7:42

in where it just felt like he picked his

7:44

spots better. Yeah. And so it

7:46

seemed like he won some of those debates with Biden. It

7:48

was unanimous. Even Trump's own people were like, Jesus,

7:51

man, like this was rough. Yeah.

7:53

And he was lying. Well,

7:56

that was like, no, you didn't. Oh, he definitely thought that. I,

8:00

he was high as balls on some kind of,

8:02

for sure. And that was,

8:04

that was the debate where he had COVID. That

8:07

was the one where he had COVID. So God knows

8:09

what they had given him. And,

8:12

you know, I mean, he literally like, that

8:14

was pre-vaccine and everything. Joe Biden, the very

8:16

old man, this was the most virulent, you

8:19

know, most aggressive, dangerous strain of COVID. Like

8:21

he risked this man's life on the debate

8:23

stage. And then he was wildly unhinged. It

8:25

just felt out of control. The thing with

8:27

Hillary felt very methodical.

8:30

It felt like he was picking his spots,

8:32

like you said, and he was in control.

8:35

This was just like unhinged. So they need to

8:37

dial back whatever they were given in for that

8:39

one, they got to dial it back like 80%.

8:42

Somebody said on Twitter that for this debate, we'll

8:44

be witnessing the cutting edge of modern amphetamines. Yeah.

8:47

Like they're gonna pump these dudes up with

8:49

everything under the sun. Yeah. It's

8:51

gonna be a science experiment out there, man. Trump, you gotta

8:54

get the balance right. With Biden, you just

8:56

gotta crank it up. You possibly can, that's

8:58

the strategy there. The other thing is when

9:00

he does like the make my day pal

9:02

thing. I read that as,

9:04

cause Corin sent me this video in our little group

9:06

text. Yeah. And

9:08

he was like, what is this? And

9:10

my reaction was like, he's trying to

9:13

out Trump here. That's the vibe.

9:15

The vibe is I'm not gonna be the, you

9:17

know, calm grandpa who like calms the nation, which

9:19

is how people view him at the best times.

9:21

But he's like, I'm going to out Trump Trump

9:24

and do the, oh yeah, oh

9:26

yeah, fellow, you want some of this? It's like,

9:29

it doesn't fit. You gotta know

9:31

your role. You gotta know your lane. That doesn't fit

9:33

right now. Yeah. You know what

9:35

I'm saying? To me, it read more like,

9:37

remember the look fat moment or like

9:39

the line. No, this was more planned. That was

9:42

the dog phase line or whatever. People like that dude was

9:44

off the cuff. I felt like he was

9:46

trying to recapture that. But that was off the

9:48

cuff. This was planned. It was so much worse. He's trying

9:50

to show some kind of vitality, you

9:52

know? And he's trying to

9:54

strategically frame his lack of

9:57

willingness to debate because of you accurately.

10:00

point out, he's doing agreeing to fewer

10:02

debates and in the circumstances that are

10:04

under his control versus under the presidential

10:06

debate commission. He's trying to frame that

10:08

as like, yeah, let's do it anytime,

10:10

any place. And it's like, no, no,

10:12

actually, there's a specific time, specific place,

10:15

limited, you know, limited number, tight

10:17

constraints, et cetera. That's the

10:19

other part of this is so

10:21

the way these presidential debates normally works is the presidential

10:23

debate commission. It's got a lot of problems. This is

10:25

like a big saga. It's like really into this thing.

10:27

So I've learned about it vicariously, but, you know, the

10:29

DNC and the RNC are party to and they pay

10:32

in money and it's got all these big sponsors, et

10:34

cetera, et cetera. Anyway, they

10:36

typically set the rules and parameters

10:38

of the debate in conjunction

10:40

with these news organizations, et cetera. So

10:43

part of what is different about this

10:45

is they're both saying we're not doing

10:47

that anymore. We're just coming to

10:49

our own agreement about how we're going to do these

10:51

debates. And that means that almost

10:54

guaranteed, RFK Jr. Jill Stein, anyone else is

10:56

going to be left out in the cold

10:58

because this is a negotiation between the two.

11:03

Very likely. 100 percent. 100

11:06

percent. Very likely. But with the

11:08

presidential debate commission, there's at least some semblance

11:10

of like separate independence and,

11:12

you know, independent like set criteria

11:14

for how you qualify. Or is

11:16

this is just like, no, we're

11:18

just we're just doing it. We're

11:20

colluding together to shut out any

11:23

other choices. Well, they

11:25

didn't allow Jill Stein last time. They didn't allow Gary

11:27

Johnson last time. It was just as rigged.

11:29

It's just rigged by a third party entity, which is also

11:31

controlled by the Democrats and Republicans. This one

11:33

is just them independently rigging it. Yeah.

11:35

Yeah. There was there was no

11:37

conceivable world where RFK was going to get on that debate stage. But

11:40

if you look at the criteria, like, I

11:42

don't know what the criteria was from those

11:44

debates, but

11:46

yeah, I mean, RFK Jr. is polling pretty well.

11:49

It's really OK. They'll rig it. They

11:51

always do. It is. It

11:54

is outrageous. So

11:56

you at least have one anti-agennicide candidate up

11:58

there. But it is outrageous. to just

12:00

totally shut him out of this process given the

12:02

fact that I mean Ross Perot

12:04

I believe participated in debates didn't he? That's

12:07

why they have now rigged it because Ross Perot did

12:09

well and he got 19% of the

12:11

popular vote. As consequential of a third-party Canada

12:13

as we've seen in a lot of years

12:16

so that part is that's

12:18

just wrong you know. Definitely but

12:20

that's not in a million years would it change

12:22

no matter who was running it. Alright let's go

12:24

to the polling stuff because

12:27

over morning Joe over on MSNBC had

12:29

an absolute meltdown over some new polls

12:31

that show that Joe Biden's not doing

12:33

so well against our big beefy boy.

12:35

Let's watch. Where are the polls talking

12:38

us directionally about the race? I understand

12:40

there is a difference though with the

12:42

New York Times, the Anna poll and

12:44

you know this it's given disproportionate impact.

12:47

This year, this cycle

12:49

it is skewed wildly. Bring in Donald

12:51

Trump's direction hold on and the

12:53

New York Times feasts on it

12:55

with clickbait stories like a dozen

12:58

at a time. And what I'm

13:01

trying to focus on is what I think people

13:03

should pay attention to. But what I'm trying to

13:05

focus on is the New York Times right now

13:07

is actively shaping the election cycles where this poll

13:09

comes out on a Sunday and on Monday people

13:12

go oh and I heard it

13:14

and I'm sitting there going oh don't be

13:16

so stupid that's why we're doing this. So we're

13:18

now, no hold on a second, hold on

13:20

hold on. What I hear is after these

13:22

CNN polls come out every time, New York

13:24

Times poll says oh well everything that Joe

13:27

Biden's done since the state

13:29

of the union address, all of these, all

13:31

this money that he's put out, all of

13:34

the campaigning is for not, no it's not,

13:36

no it's not. There's one

13:39

poll that's wildly skewed

13:42

every time after every New York

13:44

Times CNN poll comes out. It

13:47

completely changes the political battlefield out

13:49

there for about a week, week

13:51

and a half. It distorts the

13:53

questions that are asked of the

13:55

White House, it distorts the questions

13:57

that are asked of Donald Trump.

14:00

It distorts all of the opinion. It

14:02

distorts everything. And that keeps happening every

14:04

month when this comes out. And then

14:07

finally, about two weeks later, after

14:09

the residue of the New York Times- –Ciena Paul

14:11

leaves, people go, oh, I think

14:13

Joe Biden's on a winning streak. And then two

14:16

weeks later, it comes out again, and it's

14:18

garbage. It's an outlier. OK,

14:22

Joe Scarborough sounds

14:24

like Trump and sounds like MAGA there. Because what Trump

14:26

famously does – and everybody knows this – is he'll

14:29

only cite the polls where he's winning, and usually the

14:31

ones where he's winning by a lot. And he'll try

14:33

to pretend like this means that this is across the

14:35

board and this is unanimous and everybody knows I'm winning.

14:38

And the MAGA people will call any polls that are

14:40

bad for Trump fake news. They call the ones that

14:42

are good for Trump, like they parrot those, like those

14:44

are phenomenal. I was going to start citing

14:46

the liberal equivalent of cat turd polls.

14:49

No, but literally, that's what we're witnessing. We're witnessing

14:52

the resistance liberals become one – I mean, they've

14:54

already been like MAGA in a million different ways,

14:56

but this is a million and one ways now.

14:58

Because I mean, this is embarrassing, man. Are you

15:01

really so dumb that you think it's not possible

15:03

for him to be down four points in a

15:05

national poll or six points in a national poll?

15:07

Or it's been consistent that he's down in the

15:09

swing states. What I've been seeing for months and

15:12

months and months is in five to seven of

15:14

the states, he's been losing, and the margins in

15:16

some of those states are actually pretty freaking devastating.

15:18

So your response to that is to shove your

15:21

head in the sand and pretend like, no, actually,

15:23

he's winning and this is fake news. I mean,

15:25

that's what you're doing. It's a fake news accusation.

15:27

But like, notice there's no actual explanation as to

15:29

why he thinks it's fake. He just, oh, it's

15:31

an outlier. Is it? It's not. Because what I've

15:33

seen is that, you know, when you look at

15:35

the average of polls, it's about it's roughly tied.

15:37

If anything, Trump has a slight lead right now.

15:39

Not that long ago was the opposite where Biden

15:41

had a little lead, but now it's shifted back

15:43

in Trump's direction. So you're not even making a,

15:45

hey, look at the methodology. Hey, they over sample

15:47

this group or that group. The outlier fake news.

15:49

It's not. It's not. It's not. And

15:51

I mean, okay. So in this poll, it

15:54

has Biden down 13 points in Nevada. 13.

16:00

getting 30% of the

16:02

vote in a state that he won, he

16:04

got 50% of last time around.

16:07

And even if that is off by 10

16:10

points, you're still screwed.

16:12

You are exactly right. So

16:15

rather than dealing with that, actually my favorite

16:17

part of that clip is how John Heilman's

16:19

like trying to very tepidly, well, if you'd

16:21

look at the trajectory, like maybe we should

16:23

consider, they're like, no, absolutely not. This is

16:25

fake news. I was ready for him to

16:27

pull out like, you know, this is Kremlin,

16:29

probably Russian propaganda coming in the New York

16:31

Times. It was just as

16:33

unhinged. They do these clickbait stories. Yeah,

16:36

of course they're going to put stories

16:38

in their newspaper about their poll

16:40

that they commissioned. And by

16:42

the way, if this poll showed a different

16:44

result, you would be talking about it glowingly

16:46

in all the ways as well. So

16:50

to me, this seemed to me like two things

16:52

are going on, three things are going on. Number

16:54

one, you know, the people

16:56

that are at that table, they're in

16:59

their own little tightly controlled bubble and

17:02

they don't really know many Trump

17:04

supporters. So it is so directly

17:06

at odds with their own experience of the

17:08

world. They just can't accept it. Right. It

17:11

can't possibly be that there are people out there who are going to

17:13

vote for Donald Trump. It can't possibly

17:15

be that our great savior, Joe Biden, is

17:17

down by this. Just can't possibly be something

17:20

else must be going on here. That's

17:22

number one. Number two, this is what

17:25

the MSNBC audience desperately wants to hear.

17:27

So he's also delivering for his audience

17:29

what exactly, you know, the perspective that

17:31

they want to get in the morning.

17:33

And number three, we know that Joe

17:35

is in direct contact, Joe Scarborough is

17:37

in direct contact with Joe Biden himself

17:39

and the Biden White House and campaign

17:42

team. So I also think this

17:44

comes directly from them. And I

17:46

mentioned before, there was an Axios article about how Biden

17:49

and his top advisors, they just don't

17:51

believe the polls. They're in hash. This

17:53

is like, you know, the the Romney

17:56

campaign era hashtag unskewed the polls on

17:58

the Democratic side now. It doesn't matter

18:00

what data comes out. They don't believe it. When the

18:03

truth of the matter is these

18:05

New York Times polls, they

18:07

overstated Joe Biden's support. Last

18:09

time there was a Biden-Trump race. So

18:12

if anything, you'd be concerned in that direction. Now to

18:14

put the other side of it out there, in the

18:16

midterms, when you looked race by

18:18

race, especially Senate race by

18:20

race, the state polls, they were a little

18:22

more favorable towards the Republicans than the result

18:25

ended up being. And even that was a

18:27

mixed bag in terms of the states and

18:30

they understated the Republican support in the national

18:32

House poll. So even though it was a

18:34

mixed bag, the best you could

18:36

say is like, yeah, we'll take a look with the grain of salt

18:38

because the polls have been a little bit all over the place. OK,

18:41

fair enough. But this is just garbage. It's ridiculous

18:43

because I don't like it. And how dare you

18:45

even consider this to be credible? So

18:48

what is true is that

18:50

in the primary polls on the Republican

18:53

side, Trump has been consistently

18:55

overestimated in those polls by seven to

18:57

eight percentage points. And then you actually

18:59

it actually comes time to vote. He

19:02

underperforms. But to your point, even if

19:04

you factor for that, he loses the

19:06

election because he's down more than

19:08

that in Nevada and Georgia and

19:10

Arizona. Yeah. Now, Arizona, I call

19:13

that a must win for the Democrats now because

19:15

this is the sort of suburban retired folks who

19:17

have flocked to Biden in the past because they

19:19

view Trump as too extreme. Yeah. Now,

19:21

if Arizona is going to the Republicans. So in other

19:23

words, it really is just shoving their head in the

19:25

sand. And if you want to account for whatever sort of

19:27

dynamic they're talking about to one extent or another, you're still

19:30

missing the mark. Because by the way, I pulled up

19:32

the real clear politics average of the national policy or

19:34

granted national is not as important state by state swing

19:36

state is important. But in the

19:38

average right now, Trump is up one point one

19:40

percentage points. And

19:43

look, here's the thing to your point about them being in a

19:45

bubble. They dismissed the

19:47

Gaza protests like it's nothing. Right.

19:50

And the fact of the matter is, Joe Biden,

19:52

in order to win the presidential election, he needs

19:54

to do what he did last time with young

19:56

voters, which is win young voters by 30

19:58

percentage points or more. Now there's a number

20:00

of polls that have Trump up with young voters. And even if you

20:02

want to say, hey, it's not going to be that bad, it's not

20:04

going to be doomsday. Even if you

20:07

just give Biden a 10 point win

20:09

with young voters in the election, you're

20:11

still losing. Right. So maybe

20:13

don't. And it's all it's just it's their bias. It's

20:15

their own bias. They can't help. But look at these

20:17

kids and have scorn and disdain for them and discuss

20:19

for them. They smear them and say they support Hamas.

20:22

And that's why they're protesting or they wake up in

20:24

the morning and have a passion and hatred for all

20:26

Jews. And that's why they're getting out there in the

20:28

street. It's very clearly because they want to stop the

20:30

genocide and divest their own universities from

20:32

Israel. That's the point. But

20:34

they're not taking them at face value. They're not steel

20:36

manning their argument. They're straw manning their argument. And

20:39

as a direct result of swatting this story aside like

20:41

it's nothing, you can see the bubble that they're in. Like,

20:44

no, that matters. It matters how

20:46

young voters vote. It matters how

20:48

Arab Americans and Muslim Americans vote because

20:50

there's key demographics in important swing

20:52

states. You can't just swap that aside, you

20:54

fucking idiots. So in this

20:56

poll, they found 13 percent of

20:58

the people who had voted for Biden in 2020 and

21:01

now we're not going to vote for Biden. It

21:04

was over Israel Gaza. So

21:06

I mean, it's very clear that even just

21:08

that shift alone would be enough to doom

21:10

him because of how close it was last

21:12

time around. And he's got problems in

21:14

other parts of the coalition as well. I

21:17

mean, most of the voters who are shifting

21:19

away from him are young or they're

21:21

black or they're Latino. The

21:24

one demographic that is really sticking with him,

21:26

which is why he does a little better

21:28

in like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and then in

21:31

Arizona, the Sunbelt states is old

21:33

white people. They're

21:36

still there and they're rock solid,

21:38

etc., which is the constituency that

21:41

Joe Scarborough is not only a part of,

21:43

but that he's also broadcasting to. But it

21:45

struck me when you were talking making the

21:47

MAGA comparison. There's another very

21:50

direct comparison here to be made with MAGA

21:52

because, you know, in the stop to steal

21:54

stuff, their thing was always like, oh, the

21:56

Trump results were rigged. But any of the

21:58

results that went well for Republicans those

22:00

were all fine and good. Well, in this

22:02

poll, the suggestion here is basically

22:04

like the polls rigged and it's fake news, etc.

22:07

But they don't seem to have a problem

22:09

with the results that show down ballot that

22:12

every single Democrat is winning their

22:14

racist down ballot. And to me,

22:16

that spells even more of a problem for Joe

22:18

Biden, because we have seen in these

22:21

special elections, we have seen Democrats perform

22:23

well and Roe versus Wade being really

22:25

determinative and not being very important. So

22:28

you look at that and on the one hand,

22:30

you're like, okay, well, maybe that means just every

22:33

Democrat is going to benefit from that. The other

22:35

possibility is every sort of like generic Democrats going

22:37

to benefit from it. But Joe Biden is his

22:39

own case. And that seems to be

22:41

what this poll at least is indicating is going to

22:43

happen. Yeah. Generic

22:46

Democrat running for Senate wherever, fine. Joe

22:49

Biden is a separate matter. This

22:52

man is a drag on the Democratic

22:54

ticket. He is the worst performer of

22:56

every single candidate, all the Senate candidates,

22:58

they are the worst performer. And

23:00

so in a sense, I think he sort of has to live in

23:02

his dream land, because the only other thing, if

23:05

you're going to acknowledge reality, you have to acknowledge the fact

23:07

that by deciding to run

23:09

again, you are risking handing

23:11

the White House back to Donald Trump because

23:14

you are profoundly and

23:16

uniquely unpopular in terms

23:18

of a Democratic candidate. They never have

23:20

forgotten early in the Democratic primary in 2020

23:22

when they were underestimated, when they did horrible

23:25

in the first three states. That's exactly right.

23:27

They will always hang on to it. So

23:29

in his mind, I am perpetually underestimated because

23:31

of that instance. But

23:33

things change, man. Donald Trump was Teflon for a

23:35

while. Everybody thought he was Teflon. Then he lost the

23:38

2020 election and got hit with 14 different kinds

23:40

of fraud charges that he lost the cases and now

23:42

has to pay a gazillion dollars. Things

23:44

change. Things are fluid, not stagnant. And

23:46

they don't realize it. And it's a

23:48

terrifying scenario because if you believe like I

23:50

do that Trump actually is an existential threat, then

23:52

it's like you're literally the last guy you should

23:54

be running this race. That's

23:57

absolutely the last one. Yeah, I think that's what

23:59

the data shows. this point, he is

24:01

a drag on the Democratic ticket. And,

24:03

you know, right now it shows a

24:05

lot of split ticket voting where like

24:07

in that Nevada poll, Biden's down by

24:09

13. The Democratic Senate

24:11

candidate is basically like tied up maybe

24:13

a point or two, but in the

24:15

margin of error, it's very unlikely you're

24:17

going to see actually that much split

24:19

ticket voting on Election Day, just

24:21

judging by recent history. And so, you know, Biden could

24:23

be the reason not only that the White House is

24:26

lost for Democrats, but that the Senate is lost for

24:28

Democrats and they're unable to pick up the House

24:30

because he's that much of a drag on the

24:32

Democratic side. That's at least very much what that's

24:34

what this poll looks like. And that is very

24:36

much in the realm of possibility. Yeah.

24:38

Yeah. All right. Let's go

24:40

ahead and throw it to our awesome guest. He

24:43

is the number one music reviewer on YouTube. I'm

24:45

really excited for this conversation. Here's Anthony Fantano. Welcome

24:49

to Anthony Fantano. Thanks so much for being with

24:51

us, man. Really appreciate it. No

24:54

problem. Thanks for having me on. Our pleasure.

24:56

Our pleasure. So you

24:58

guys, Crystal, I've been a little obsessed

25:00

with the like many people have

25:02

been with the beef here between Kendrick and

25:04

Drake. And I wanted to bring you in

25:06

because you're the number one music guy. So

25:09

where do I want to start with this?

25:11

Let's let's go all the way back and

25:13

get very simple. What started

25:16

all of this? Because wasn't there a time

25:18

when they kind of like did some performances

25:20

together and met backstage and they were in

25:22

theory cool with each other? What led us

25:24

to this point where now we have a

25:26

historic beef between the two of them? Yeah,

25:30

I mean, early on in the 2010s

25:32

as Drake and Kendrick were both respectively

25:35

kind of blowing up and building the

25:37

foundation for the careers that they have

25:39

today, they were more or

25:41

less cool. They performed together. They've

25:44

been on tracks together. One

25:47

track off of Kendrick's Good Kid Med

25:49

City features Drake, one of those most

25:51

classic albums. Like, you know, there was

25:53

a point where things

25:56

were good between them, for sure.

25:59

I don't know. you could

26:01

attribute this point

26:04

that they're at now to any one single

26:06

thing, I think it might just kind of

26:08

be a result of maybe

26:10

Jibellasi resentment kind of boiling up

26:13

over years because as both of

26:15

them kind of continue to blow

26:17

up, I

26:19

feel like their respective styles kind

26:21

of diverge further and further as

26:24

their audiences.

26:28

And I think

26:30

as I said, there might be some jealousy there

26:32

in terms of like who's doing most numbers, who's

26:34

getting the most attention, who represents kind of like

26:36

what wing and point

26:38

of view in the overall hip hop

26:40

community. And there might be

26:42

some personal stuff too as well there behind the

26:45

scenes that we don't entirely know that hasn't been

26:47

fully dragged out yet, but just looking at

26:50

it from the outside, this

26:52

is kind of a head to

26:54

head that even the fans of

26:56

both respective artists have been

26:58

looking for for a long time because there

27:01

are people who are on Drake's side that

27:03

think Kendrick doesn't do well commercially or as

27:05

well as Drake because he just doesn't make

27:07

his good music. He's not as talented, he's not

27:09

as entertaining, he doesn't make stuff

27:12

that's as compelling or as interesting. There are

27:14

people who are on Kendrick's side that think

27:16

Drake is only popular because he is a

27:19

sellout. He's essentially a pop artist parading as

27:21

a hip hop artist and he doesn't actually

27:23

care about the genre and the culture on

27:25

the whole. So,

27:29

when it comes to subliminals, like I know

27:31

that there's been some subliminals back and forth.

27:34

My understanding and correct me if I'm wrong

27:36

is that Kendrick sort of started that by

27:39

name dropping. I'm going years and years ago,

27:41

name dropping. It wasn't just Drake. It was

27:43

like J Cole, Wale and some

27:45

others and saying like, you know, I want to,

27:47

I want to murder you guys musically. Like, yeah,

27:49

you're my boys, but I want to murder you

27:51

musically. And then that was like the

27:54

first one and then that led to sort of like a cascade

27:56

of them throwing subliminals at each other back

27:59

and forth. Is that roughly

28:01

the timeline as to how it unfolded? That

28:03

is definitely a part of the timeline, I

28:05

would say. What you're referring

28:08

to is a years old

28:10

feature verse that Kendrick had on a

28:13

track by an artist named Big Sean. And

28:15

yeah, that was

28:17

a pretty legendary and viral verse

28:19

because Kendrick wasn't even so much

28:23

being subliminal, subliminal about it, subliminal

28:25

about it. He literally called out

28:27

numerous artists, numerous, and Drake was

28:29

one of them by a

28:31

name. And, um, you

28:34

know, just kind of in the name

28:36

of, I think like just

28:38

kind of general hip hop competition. I

28:40

mean, there wasn't anything about that verse

28:42

that at least to me as a

28:44

fan, uh, wrong as

28:46

like, you know, coming from a place of personal hatred

28:48

or dislike of any of them. I mean, he kind

28:51

of named too many people to have any specific issue

28:53

with any one of them. Uh, what

28:55

I kind of feel like the, um, the

28:57

matter is, is that, you know, there

29:00

are some artists who kind of took that verse for what it was.

29:03

And there are some artists who might've, you

29:05

know, maybe again, and in the case of

29:07

Drake, um, took that a little

29:09

personally also kind of like understanding the greater

29:12

context of this. Uh, while

29:14

Drake is obviously the, you

29:16

know, most famous, most popular, most,

29:19

uh, you know, respected and,

29:22

uh, you know, praised

29:24

modern hip hop artists of, you

29:26

know, our era, uh, that wasn't

29:28

always the case. You know, Drake came up, um,

29:32

you know, obviously there's never been

29:34

a point in his career where he didn't have commercial success, but

29:36

there have been a lot of points in his career where he

29:39

didn't have a respect and he

29:41

was being constantly made fun of for, you

29:43

know, being soft, not actually being hip hop

29:45

and so on and so forth. Um,

29:47

you know, there are a lot of criticisms you could level at

29:49

Drake, but I feel like, you know, kind of going at his

29:52

Masculinity, his validity in the genre wasn't

29:54

necessarily, you know, the, the, the nicest

29:56

thing you could be saying about the

29:58

guy. And, and. You know, he's

30:01

been kind of hearing this it droning narrative

30:03

about him and his legitimacy in hip hop

30:05

for years and years and years and years

30:07

and years. And even of Kendrick wasn't necessarily

30:09

coming out from that angle. Or if he

30:12

did kind of join the chorus inadvertently in

30:14

a way so I could certainly how Drake

30:16

would kind of. you know, take that personally

30:18

and away and be angry that Kendrick would

30:20

you know? sort of like take that stance

30:23

or in that song, is it. And then

30:25

there's even an interview click with Drake posts

30:27

are you know the release of that verse

30:29

and. So while he wasn't, you

30:31

know I'm. Ah, did outright

30:34

angry about it in the interview or

30:36

he did seem upset to be listed

30:38

in that bunch of name is may

30:40

be on some level because he collaborated

30:42

with Kendrick in the past, Snow Dumb

30:44

Get A seemed kind of like he

30:46

wasn't that game for any kind of

30:48

like future collaboration between the two of

30:50

the maybe as a result. That

30:52

that that makes sense for people

30:54

who are taught all I knew

30:56

outside assistance us explain a little

30:58

that more be different spaces that

31:00

Drake and Hundred occupy in the hip

31:03

hop world. And also you said

31:05

that. Jacket taken like are a

31:07

lot of disrespect. For a lot a year, the

31:09

like you now you eli. Anti soft, etc.

31:11

the had he gained respect as I don't

31:13

really realize that that pastor. Towards him at

31:15

advertised. I'm I

31:18

would say. Broadly.

31:20

And in generally there has been a lot

31:22

more respects brought his way as a result

31:25

of just the fact that he has reached

31:27

a point where his numbers have become so

31:29

huge your to hire an eyeball. Really ignore

31:31

them. I mean for for a lot of

31:33

people are. You know, for

31:35

better for worse. Many fans do view hip

31:37

hop is like a numbers game and if

31:39

you're doing the numbers the sort of make

31:42

you completely under normal, much of the same

31:44

way that you know. Word in the two

31:46

thousand bc became a force that you dislike.

31:48

Couldn't. Get. Out that the did the

31:50

with the with the was that was there was

31:52

no was discounting jeezy success and relevance with in

31:54

hip hop Whether or not you sided with Knaus

31:56

in the be the he had with him or

31:59

maybe you saw. The mother armpits was better

32:01

Street he was still doing the numbers, he was

32:03

still gathering the attention. He was still expanding. You

32:05

know that the broader commercial success of hip hop

32:07

for itself and lot of artists underneath him as

32:09

you can really discount that at the end of

32:12

the day of Drake is kind of reached a

32:14

similar position, but he deserves it an even larger

32:16

point of commercial success. Eminem has been in a

32:18

similar you know position as well. They're them and

32:20

a lot of people who you know for obvious

32:22

reasons get him hard time abuse coming up. A

32:25

didn't see him as legitimately a part of hip

32:27

hop community the then but then be. He became

32:29

such a huge. Commercial success Success that

32:31

you couldn't ignore him. I'm.

32:34

Now. Be didn't know. Drakes still

32:36

though is not necessarily respected, are seen

32:38

as legitimate by a lot of hip

32:40

hop fans for the same reasons that

32:43

he always has been, but I feel

32:45

like as his. Star.

32:47

Has grown larger, I'm a

32:49

lot of people have been feeling internally. many

32:51

of the things that catered to scan outright

32:54

said in his songs then I? he doesn't

32:56

actually kind of. I'd give back to the

32:58

genre that he just basically kind of like

33:00

you know, Guam's on to whatever viral artist

33:03

is odd at the moment in the just

33:05

like you know, kind of like weeds them

33:07

in the dust the moment that he's done.

33:10

Kind of like you know, parasitic we are

33:12

sucking cloud off or whatever viral sound or

33:14

song or moment that they're having at any

33:16

given time, he doesn't really go the extra

33:19

mile. And any of his tracks even

33:21

going back Clinic is early stuff

33:23

to address social issues to address

33:25

issues affecting the black community and

33:27

the world of it Apart at

33:29

large, it's really dislike kind of

33:31

all vibes. You know it's vibes.

33:33

It dance tracks, it's catchy little

33:35

bangers. and while all that's good

33:37

or there a lot of people

33:39

feel like in that sense Drake

33:41

kind of is further drifting what

33:43

people see his hip hop because

33:45

Drake represents the genre whether we

33:47

want him to were not. Kind

33:50

of see as further drifting away from

33:52

it's roots and it's political ads or

33:54

kind of low I q no political

33:56

and social messaging and kind of putting

33:59

it into something. You know, kind of

34:01

feels like the genre on the surface but is

34:03

just kind of a sad. Yeah. So

34:05

that's like that's been. Happening for a

34:07

while though on strike is that my part of

34:09

an hour to. Witness

34:11

I know it's his is just become like the

34:14

latest representation of the in away right? How

34:16

would you describe than in contrast? In contrast,

34:18

how would you describe Kendrick and the face

34:20

the he occupies. I

34:23

mean a a lot of people. Consider.

34:25

Kendrick to as far as the

34:27

mainstream goes, to be the best

34:29

representation of what may be a

34:31

snob or music or most easily,

34:33

oh, that's real hip hop and

34:36

instance, real rap music. or but

34:38

simultaneously, Kendrick has been able to

34:40

credibly earn that label while experimenting

34:42

in the genre so wildly that

34:44

he's doing completely new things with

34:46

it in terms of like you

34:48

know, instrumental pallets and song concepts

34:51

and I'm You a conceptual storytelling

34:53

ideas that can go toe. To

34:55

toe with really any album in any

34:57

genre, He totally transcends hip hop in

34:59

terms of his artistic abilities and much

35:01

of the same way that Rate has.

35:03

He's also kind of expanded the fan

35:06

base of the genre because. Of

35:09

her of for eternal for better, for worse.

35:11

You know he's brought into the fold A

35:13

lot of people who may not have taken

35:15

that as seriously before the hood of the

35:18

Book before they heard you know I'm. A

35:20

in album way good kid. Med city or T

35:22

pad or something like that. So

35:26

let me ask. So let's go

35:28

through a main charges from one

35:30

against the other. So when it

35:32

comes to Kendrick on Drake kind

35:34

of charges that your fate activists

35:36

you know you're not really about

35:38

and activists life, you're just doing

35:40

it as an angle on. He

35:42

claims that thought Dave free who's contracts close

35:45

friends live with his wife and one of

35:47

the kids as they freeze or we

35:49

know that one is on true weekend on

35:51

pack that a little bit arm and then

35:53

probably the most explosive allegation was that are

35:56

you beat your wife. So. That's

35:58

what drinks has about Kendrick. Kendrick

36:00

said about Drake. Something. Dispel

36:02

the for while you have you have ghost

36:05

rider scenery there, your own stuff on your

36:07

an authentic you're a culture vulture arm and

36:09

then the two biggest ones against break were

36:12

you have a secret daughter who's eleven. And

36:15

of course you are. You drink pt.

36:17

Light. So. Those those

36:19

are the charges in your estimation.

36:21

arms. Is. It all true.

36:24

Is it all falls falls? Is it a mixed

36:26

bag? Or they both lying roughly the same amount?

36:28

Like what have you score that. I.

36:30

Mean you know I'll say in

36:33

terms of like the great charges,

36:35

the domestic abuse allegations are currently

36:37

not. Founded. In anything

36:39

I'm at least from a you

36:41

know what the internet's been able

36:43

to derive as there's been a

36:46

recent instance of i is the

36:48

mother of his children, her brother.

36:51

Postings kind of like tweet in support of

36:53

Kendrick which a lot of people can read

36:55

of like well as he was doing that

36:57

well, why would he be announcer like the

36:59

on Kennard side of the midst of all

37:01

this I'm in. there have been sort of

37:03

like in the criticisms of Kendrick over the

37:05

years not being as politically active or a

37:07

socially aware of or or as a young

37:09

pro black as he claims himself to be

37:11

i'm be you know but a lot of

37:13

those criticisms have been leveled I think in

37:15

a way that's like a lot more effective

37:17

than would Drake has said on his tracks

37:19

or how we kind of details. That organ

37:21

and black of detail. And it's

37:23

and unfortunately. I

37:26

think Drake a lot of his or criticisms

37:28

and insults toward Kendrick sound kind of like

37:30

second hand, not even in terms of like

37:32

they're coming from ghost writers, but either coming

37:35

from stuff and conjecture that he's read about

37:37

Kendrick on the internet. He says like okay,

37:39

yeah, that sounds good. I'll say that because

37:41

the sounds like something that people would say

37:43

about him so he doesn't seem to have

37:46

like analyze the guy as deeply as Kendrick

37:48

is, analyzed him in order to pull him

37:50

apart in the way that he has on

37:52

tracks like euphoria. As far as like the

37:54

allegations against Drake, I'm. I I I think

37:57

the resonating with the audience a bit more

37:59

widely because. Hundred is pulling out a

38:01

lot of things that have been said

38:04

that rate for years ago in terms

38:06

of like be weird and somewhat inappropriate

38:08

and been a very strange personal interaction

38:10

sometimes overtaxed, sometimes in person that he's

38:13

had with women who are under age

38:15

or are just like you know are

38:17

around the border between the you know,

38:20

seventeen and eighteen or so I'm so

38:22

there's that. But on top of that

38:24

some of the other stuff the he

38:27

said in terms of like the asem

38:29

big, the personal. Pill Problems and so

38:31

on and so forth. I think there

38:33

are a lot of people who are

38:36

kind of like seeing that has a

38:38

legitimate and especially since there's been like

38:40

some extra leads on the internet through

38:42

this anonymous twitter account Ebony Prince, Two

38:44

K, Two Four and seems to have

38:47

been kendrick source for all those personal

38:49

effects that were featured on the single

38:51

art to Meet the Grams, the T

38:53

shirts, ah, the prescription pills or the

38:55

receipts, the jewelry, and so on and

38:58

so forth. And this guy's been posting

39:00

video footage of these things and has

39:02

been a you know, cut posting somewhat

39:04

manically in a very disgruntled fashion about

39:06

how he feels like Drake is the

39:09

reason he's got fired and he hopes

39:11

to do maybe make some can profit

39:13

off of. these are personal effects and

39:15

he claims that you know you hire

39:17

a lawyer and or wants take action

39:20

against any claims that he's a you

39:22

know, I'm. Ah,

39:24

Having having stolen any of these items

39:26

as opposed to gonna hold of them

39:28

are legally through means of potentially working

39:30

and hospitality in those items were are

39:32

discarded and left behind A during a

39:34

stay the Drake had a T A

39:36

Mark Hotel is you know as of

39:38

right now Kendrick hasn't done in a

39:40

pulled any receipts on any of this

39:42

stuff. seven and some of it I

39:44

sort of don't necessarily you know, wish

39:46

for per se I mean are they

39:48

I feel like to break does have

39:50

an eleven year old daughter A D

39:52

C should just be allowed. To decrease be

39:54

you know I'm I would hate to see

39:56

for another kid of Drake Skyn.on the internet

39:58

and sort of not. The choice or say

40:01

is whether or not they're living in the

40:03

limelight. I'm I don't really feel like that's

40:05

to anybody's benefit and that would just you

40:07

know we did to a lot of a

40:09

on necessarily ugliness for that kid on the

40:11

internet in Detroit. Bears isn't self enough You

40:13

know we don't need a dragon other sit

40:16

in the things in order to you know

40:18

further make it. I'm gonna look like how

40:20

are we wanted to look I'm but so

40:22

you're outside of that. Nobody's

40:24

like directly calling anybody our on their

40:26

lies. Everybody just kind of like in

40:28

a leveling allegations that each other and

40:30

Tracks I and for the most part

40:32

through various channels that both of these

40:34

guys have to communicate with the public

40:36

that they've they've pretty much signaled like

40:38

out were done When I do anymore,

40:40

Tracks is pretty much over most likely

40:43

Drake said be thrown out more suburbs

40:45

and stuff like that on future records

40:47

and they're a proverb. you know, a

40:49

Kendrick one or two here and there

40:51

as well, but some as far as

40:53

like doing more. Direct tracks at each other

40:55

that sort of seems to slow down. So

40:57

is there a mall in Trades Camp And

40:59

I remember one of the Kendrick Lines was

41:02

implying that he had like ten songs in

41:04

the chamber that are direct as his at

41:06

Drake. So. Is there a

41:08

mole or is it like you described

41:10

as one person who got Drakes goods

41:12

because he left him at a hotel

41:14

or something And that's how Kendrick was

41:16

getting this information. Or is there somebody

41:19

costs Kendrick claims there's somebody close to

41:21

a drink you know, the oh, who's

41:23

secretly with Kendrick and sending him all

41:25

this damaging information? If Kendrick does have.

41:28

Some kind of mole? It must be

41:30

somebody who's completely separate from the sky

41:32

because Kendrick you know says arena for

41:34

is out there in a bar. or

41:36

consider the idea that over your might

41:38

be working for me in a so

41:41

obviously he's making some kind of claim.

41:43

The somebody on Drakes pay roll could

41:45

potentially be sort of feeding information helping

41:47

him in some way telling him things

41:49

that are you know otherwise that to

41:51

he wouldn't know this guy was posting

41:54

all this information seems to be completely

41:56

outside of Drakes camp and I. Don't

41:58

know how him in Kendrick. The actual

42:00

we got connected. There are some people theorizing

42:02

that this may even be Kendrick at a

42:04

demo be a bit too unhinged, but you

42:07

know, we really don't matter at this point.

42:09

Com did you know either? Either way, It's.

42:11

Very weird as. In. This very

42:13

shady business because now this dude for

42:15

both of these guys seems to be

42:17

how like this weird loose and ah

42:20

and he's slightly constantly posting and are

42:22

you know posting are not just stuff

42:24

about Drake and these personal effects but

42:26

he's putting up like you know a

42:28

and please pose for people who seems

42:30

to know personally he's posting stuff up

42:32

Kevin Samuels or that you know red

42:34

pill guy who passed away on not

42:36

too long ago like is is throwing

42:38

up a lot of posts and us

42:40

or seems to be really reveling in

42:42

the internet. he has. Or for the

42:44

moment that he does I'm doesn't seem

42:46

I was like lot on that. He

42:48

has added a guy who ever this

42:50

guy. Whoever this guy is, he has

42:53

those. He has those personal effects prescriptions

42:55

from can. Be on Andre

42:57

Beyond that, I don't know how to know

42:59

how far it has. Legitimacy goes beyond that.

43:01

I'm not saying the guys necessarily like the

43:04

most credible source, but whoever says he seems

43:06

you've got a hold of these items and

43:08

the fact that these items were used in

43:10

the cover our to that single and obviously

43:13

you know this picture of these items information

43:15

about them came to Kendrick through. This guy

43:17

makes him at least credible on that. Anything

43:19

and everything else he could be same could

43:21

be totally made up. Yeah, so

43:23

the ideas? He was like a service

43:26

worker at the South Tower. That's that's

43:28

that was. Held the he's kind of

43:30

putting out there which to me as car

43:32

crazy because and and this could all be sort

43:34

of like you know away to kind of

43:36

like been switched at the end of the

43:38

day but like he's putting a lot of personal

43:40

information out there with us to have to

43:42

be some people are putting to into together and

43:45

figuring out who this guy is based on

43:47

lies as you worked when he worked there. how

43:49

he got fired someone so far as like

43:51

there had to be people who know this

43:53

dude of everything that he saying is true about

43:55

himself and his background I'm very comes from

43:57

high tweeted a cryptic. Photo that was.

44:00

like from the hallway of the hotel

44:02

that he worked at. There was a

44:04

lobby security camera still image. In

44:07

that people were speculating that Drake had like

44:09

a hood over his head and he there

44:12

was like a disabled person there and that he

44:14

may have done something fucked up to the disabled

44:16

person, like pushed him or denied

44:18

him an autograph or whatever. So the still

44:21

was seen as sort of like a threat of I've got

44:23

more release on you. It's kind of interesting. But

44:27

how do you respond to the

44:30

reverse UNO card that Drake tried to pull

44:32

in the hard part six, which was his

44:34

last track where he was basically like, Kendrick,

44:36

you idiot, I've we've been feeding

44:38

you false information and you ran with it.

44:40

Now, after a while, people realize,

44:43

well, that that doesn't really make much sense. But the

44:45

way that like DJ academics tried to get them out

44:47

of this is to say, well, they

44:50

did feed Kendrick the stuff about the

44:52

daughter, which was fake, but all

44:54

the other stuff that was not fed. Do

44:57

you buy the idea of any sort of

44:59

feeding of fake information to Kendrick from Drake

45:01

or his camp? Or was that just Drake

45:03

desperately looking for like an out now in

45:06

this to be like, aha, he took like

45:08

the Internet's most wild theory that was pro

45:10

Drake and just said, yes, that's it.

45:12

That's it. That one. Yeah.

45:14

I mean, Kyle, you're you're you're doing political

45:17

stuff all day on the show and your

45:19

channel. I mean, you've got a pretty good

45:21

bullshit detector. I mean, you yourself know, you

45:23

know, seeing politicians lie every day. You

45:27

see someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene tell this huge

45:29

lie and then provably evidence

45:32

comes out that like half

45:34

the lie is definitely totally made up. You

45:37

don't you don't then give credence to the other

45:39

half. It's like, well, you know, the rest of it

45:41

might be true. You know, unfortunately, like, you know, and,

45:43

you know, the stuff about the daughter could be true

45:45

in terms of like fed information. But, you

45:48

know, unfortunately, Drake also went

45:50

the extra mile to obviously lie

45:52

about having some kind of hand

45:54

and potentially, you know, turning this

45:56

whole prescription bottle thing into a

45:58

joke. as well. You know, Drake

46:00

seemed to insinuate in his track

46:03

that this information feed to

46:06

Kendrick that these personal items

46:08

had something to do with that as

46:10

well. And that's pretty much what this

46:12

dude posting on Twitter disproved within a

46:14

few hours, just kind of showing how

46:16

he got ahold of the stuff. And,

46:21

you know, showed that, you know, he was let go

46:23

about it and you know, that it was some kind

46:25

of a discarded item thing,

46:27

you know, with Drake, you know, having stayed

46:29

at this hotel and not taking this bag

46:32

and the effects in it with him, you know,

46:34

and the time at which Drake was last at

46:36

the hotel, you know, in order for this to

46:39

be the case, in order for Drake

46:41

to feed this information to Kendrick, he

46:43

would have to be planning doing this months in

46:45

advance, like all the way back in January. You

46:50

just don't even know Anthony.

46:52

What was Drake's like, I'm going to leave

46:54

these effects here so this guy can get ahold

46:56

of them for the beef that I'm going to

46:58

have with Kendrick in 2024. Like

47:00

it's absolutely insane. Because that part of it

47:02

has been shown to be like, kind

47:08

of BS, you know, people

47:10

are now obviously calling the claims

47:12

that he fed Kendrick information about the

47:14

daughter thing into question, understandably. Yeah. So

47:17

let's walk through the timeline here because this is where it

47:19

gets really fun and interesting to me. So for the record,

47:21

I'd like to note, I've and Crystal kind

47:23

of tested this. I've always been a big Drake

47:25

hater. I never was really a big

47:27

fan of his music. Even his hits. I was just like,

47:30

I don't know. They just sound kind of generic to me.

47:32

But at the same time, I'm relatively unbiased because I

47:34

was never really a big Kendrick fan either. Right. I mean,

47:37

I'm from the era of like 50 Cent.

47:40

I think like Lil Wayne is the greatest rapper of

47:42

all time. I like Fabolous and Jada kiss. Like that's

47:44

my era. I like some Southern rap, T.I. and Big

47:46

Crit and stuff like that. So it's just, I don't

47:48

know, it was never my cup of tea. But when

47:50

Drake first came out with originally it was called Drop

47:52

and Give Me 50. Then they changed it to Push

47:54

Ups. He came out with that. That was a response

47:56

to Kendrick's verse on like that, where he says, fuck

47:58

the big three. There's only big me. So Drake comes

48:01

back with a direct this track. Um,

48:03

and then he dropped the AI, uh, the

48:05

AI song where it had a two pocket Snoop

48:08

Dogg on it. And then Drake at the end,

48:10

basically taking more shots at Kendrick. And at that

48:12

moment, I'm curious how you felt at that moment

48:14

after those first two tracks dropped, because as somebody

48:16

who's a well-known Drake hater, when I heard those

48:18

first two tracks, I was like, damn, he's sort

48:20

of killing them. And I actually liked the songs.

48:23

Is that how you felt at the time? Or

48:25

did you feel like, yeah, this is Drake being

48:27

annoying. Um, no,

48:29

I did like pushups when it came out. I've

48:31

said that, uh, much on camera. I thought it

48:33

was probably the best response that he could give

48:37

considering the fact that it's not just, you know,

48:39

a Kendrick response, but he's responding to multiple people

48:41

kind of going at him all at once. Yeah.

48:43

You know, you, you could have your

48:46

say about, you know, whether or not certain lines on the

48:49

track hit or not. But, uh, you know, he had a

48:51

lot of people to fire back at

48:53

and, uh, you know, I feel like he did

48:55

it effectively. Good structure, good song, good chorus. You

48:57

know, Drake was really focused in, in his diss

49:00

track bag on that song.

49:02

While it wasn't necessarily as catchy as like

49:04

back to back, he seemed like really locked

49:07

in and really focused. Uh, you know, in

49:09

addition to that, I

49:11

feel like the, uh, the two-pock

49:14

song kind of took things a step,

49:16

you know, too far while it was

49:18

wild in concept. And you have to

49:20

kind of respect it in terms of

49:23

like a chess

49:25

move conceptually, because it's really

49:27

weird. It's totally out there.

49:29

And on top of

49:31

it, like it's the funniest

49:34

and most entertaining kind of psychological

49:36

warfare for Drake to,

49:38

you know, use the voice of

49:40

this artist to, you know, he

49:43

reveres, uh, and sort of

49:45

like, you know, try to get in his head

49:47

in terms of like, you know, baiting a response

49:49

sooner rather than later, getting him to, uh, you

49:52

know, sort of address certain things. Drake

49:55

even through the voice of Tupac brought

49:57

up the PDF file stuff in

49:59

advance. I think in an effort because he was

50:01

anticipating he would bring it up in some way

50:04

to kind of a you know Deflate

50:07

any attempt of it being used against him like

50:09

oh, you know talk about it. I heard about

50:11

it on the Joe Budden podcast But

50:14

you know, I think Drake unfortunately

50:16

kind of got out draked here,

50:19

you know I feel like he thought this was

50:21

gonna go very much in the

50:23

same direction His beef with meek mill

50:25

did where he was gonna be able

50:27

to overwhelm him drop more tracks drop

50:29

more recordings the exact opposite happened Do

50:33

a bunch of wild and you know crazy stuff for

50:35

applause on the internet and he was just gonna kind

50:37

of went over the crowd That way but

50:39

unfortunately like well not unfortunately But Drake's

50:42

the one who ended up kind of like getting

50:44

out drake because Kendrick not only had his

50:46

response But as you know, he had that

50:49

response, you know meet the Grahams and more

50:51

ready in the chamber when Drake eventually came

50:53

out family matters and

50:56

it was Kendrick who was able to overwhelm Drake and

50:58

you know As he sort of

51:00

like flexed on that track about having more in the

51:02

chamber I have no doubt that if Drake were to

51:04

continue dropping more tracks Kendrick would put out two three

51:07

four more five Yeah so I

51:09

think I think you're right that on strategy

51:11

it really was like a Chessmaster move the

51:13

way that he baited Drake and then overwhelmed

51:15

him but so so

51:17

then you get 616 in LA and

51:20

you get what's the up but euphoria first and

51:22

then 616 in LA in response

51:25

to Push-ups at

51:27

that point. How did you score

51:29

it? Like did you think those tracks from Kendrick?

51:32

Had him up over Drake or did you think

51:34

it was a tie at that point or what was

51:36

your reading of it at that moment? Before we get

51:38

to family matters meet the grams and the rest of

51:41

them At that point

51:43

it for me. It was definitely Kendrick above Drake

51:45

because it was clear that Kendrick

51:48

was that Kendrick just had more to say

51:50

about Drake than Drake did about Kendrick The

51:53

only reason I think family Matters

51:56

is as long as it is and there's that whole

51:58

section in the middle of the tree about like Rick

52:00

Ross, which I think was like totally unnecessary. You

52:02

have, you know, your peer, the

52:04

biggest rapper next to you, completely going at

52:06

you for six minutes, you

52:09

know, unbroken, no stops. And you're like taking

52:11

a break in the middle of the song

52:13

to address other dudes who like are completely

52:15

irrelevant to this at this point. But again,

52:17

I think the only reason that song is

52:19

as long as it is, because he's like,

52:21

Oh, he said this much about me. I

52:24

got to say that much about him. And

52:26

I feel like in that position, Drake's

52:29

going to be in a

52:33

defensive place because he's never going to

52:35

write as many, even with all the

52:37

ghostwriters in the world, he's never going

52:39

to write as many dense, clever, wordy,

52:43

and, you know, surgically,

52:46

you know, analytical

52:49

bars that,

52:51

that Kendrick can write. You

52:53

know, what, what if I think if Drake was actually going to like,

52:55

kind of, you know, pull out a W

52:57

in the midst of all this, he needed to focus

52:59

and work on a back to back. Like he needed

53:01

to give us another banger. He needed to give us

53:04

a song that out of the gate would have overwhelmed

53:06

Kendrick in terms of numbers, regardless

53:08

of how many more tracks he comes out

53:10

with. Um, you know, instead Kendrick's

53:12

the one who ended up like kind of

53:14

finishing, finishing it off Drake style with not

53:16

like us at the very end of it,

53:18

he gave us a banger that pretty much

53:20

anybody could listen to. And you're

53:22

humming the horn parts. The chorus is sticking

53:24

in your head. The one liners

53:26

about to him, you know, again, being a

53:29

PDF file guy, uh, really, uh,

53:31

you know, kind of resonating and have people screaming, uh, in

53:34

the club and so on and so forth. Um,

53:36

you know, I, again, I think if Drake was going to

53:39

be Kendrick, he should have done it in

53:41

a Drake sort of way. Instead, he's like, okay,

53:43

well you're saying this dirt about me. I'm

53:45

going to try to say as much dirt about you

53:47

as I possibly can. And I'm going to talk about

53:49

you as much as I possibly can. And I think

53:51

at length over a song that had multiple

53:54

parts to it, he tried to out

53:56

Kendrick Kendrick and it didn't work. It

53:58

didn't work. I feel like Drake, uh, but, you

54:00

know, was coming from a place of insecurity.

54:04

And rather than just kind of doing what he does

54:06

well and besting Kendrick at it,

54:08

he's like, okay, well, you have a lot to say

54:11

about me. I'm gonna have a lot to say

54:13

about you. And I'm gonna do it over a beat that's gonna switch

54:15

a bunch of times and I'm gonna be kind of lyrical and I'm

54:17

gonna dig up a bunch of stuff about you. You

54:19

know, he could have, he could have like,

54:21

you know, purely just like smothered him in

54:23

terms of like, you know, hit making capacity,

54:25

but he didn't. Instead, I feel like he

54:27

got, you know, he

54:30

started worrying about whether or not these shots

54:33

and these accusations against him were landing. And,

54:35

you know, I feel like he

54:38

got kind of played. And, you know, Kendrick- That's a whole game.

54:41

So I'll give you my thoughts on how it went out.

54:43

I'm also curious in what you think, Crystal. So

54:46

when Drake first came out with the first two, I

54:48

thought, damn, he's sort of killing Kendrick. Then Kendrick drops

54:50

Euphoria and 616 in LA. And

54:52

I can understand that to people who love

54:55

hip hop and love rap and are really

54:57

into looking for the double entendres, et cetera,

54:59

and the lyrics, they look at that and

55:01

they go, okay, definitely. Kendrick is now up

55:03

over Drake. But as a casual fan like

55:05

myself, Euphoria and 616 in

55:08

LA are not something I'm gonna turn on and

55:10

vibe to. They're just not. So in my

55:12

mind, I look at it at that moment and I say,

55:14

I think Drake's is still a little up or we're kind

55:16

of tied. Then this is where it all

55:18

goes downhill for Drake because I think Kendrick did like a

55:20

chess master move. Drake drops what I

55:23

think is a very underrated song and an absolute

55:25

banger. I thought Family Matters was phenomenal.

55:28

But the fact that

55:30

Kendrick drops within 30 minutes of

55:34

that coming out just totally takes the shine

55:36

off of Family Matters. Nobody really cares about

55:38

Family Matters anymore. And then when

55:40

we get Not Like Us, the club

55:42

hit, which everybody agrees is probably the

55:44

best track in this whole thing, then

55:47

it's really like nailing the coffin type stuff. So

55:49

I actually had Drake up more than other people

55:51

for a longer time, but Not

55:53

Like Us really was the thing that just totally

55:55

flipped it where it became kind of undeniable that

55:57

Kendrick won. How did you, what did you say?

56:00

Crystal I have no independent thoughts on this This

56:03

is just filtered through what you were telling

56:05

me in your analysis at the time But

56:08

I have sort of unorthodox takes on it right Anthony

56:10

like don't you think my takes are not exactly the

56:12

mainstream I feel like most people thought Kendrick was winning

56:14

from pretty early and then he it was the you

56:16

know The he did the finishing move

56:19

with not like us I actually had Drake hanging in

56:21

there because I thought of all the songs the ones

56:23

that I'm that I listened to the most There's three

56:25

songs from this beef that I have listened to over

56:27

and over again. Yeah Family matters

56:30

push-ups and not like us. The

56:32

only one that I have Continued to listen

56:34

to is not like us to be honest

56:36

and because it's a bop and I actually Like

56:39

this is probably cringe to say but I actually

56:42

like Drake more than like I liked more of

56:44

Drake songs and Kendrick songs Going into this because

56:46

I'm total casual like I can dance to it.

56:48

It's got a great beat That's all I'm looking

56:50

for and so the fact that

56:53

yeah, the one that even I'm still going

56:55

back to is not like us I mean

56:57

that tells you something I think about the

56:59

overwhelming nature of the victory here Okay, let

57:01

me ask you this if he dropped family

57:03

matters Let's say Drake kept family matters in

57:06

the holster and he dropped

57:08

family matters last after Not

57:11

like us came out and meet the grams and all

57:13

the other ones Do you think we'd be having a

57:15

different conversation now? Because now a family matters kind of

57:17

felt like a nuke but the nuke was just put

57:20

out immediately by Kendrick when he dropped after it Right.

57:23

No, it's it's it's true I mean, it's

57:26

it's kind of hard to say because the thing is

57:28

like it it seems

57:30

like The

57:33

immediate response the immediate drop as soon as Drake

57:35

has something to say was always in the cards

57:37

for Kendrick I mean you're kind of like saying

57:42

Scenario wise like if that was the last thing

57:44

that was said in the midst of all this

57:46

family matters would would Drake be up I mean,

57:48

you know in any hip-hop beef There's always going

57:50

to be a recency bias whoever had the last

57:52

say Within any situation is

57:54

going to be the person who you know seems like

57:56

they're up I mean, you know

57:58

part of the reason you know, Euphoria was

58:01

as effective as it was and why it was

58:03

streaming so well. You know, Kyle, you talk about

58:05

like that not being a track that you just

58:07

like kind of put on and vibe to. And

58:10

that may be true. Obviously, it's not as much

58:12

of a hooky, catchy banger as like Not Like

58:14

Us is. But the thing is, like the song

58:16

was streaming so well, and it was doing so

58:18

good for Kendrick, despite it being as long and

58:21

as dense as it was, because

58:23

it had so many layers to it. It

58:25

had so many various connections to a lot

58:27

of different things about Drake. And it was

58:29

like insults with an insult with an

58:31

insult. And as a result, a

58:34

lot of people were loving the track. We're

58:36

going back again and again and again to

58:38

sort of like look over every bar. It

58:40

wasn't even just a music listening experience for

58:43

a lot of Kendrick fans. It was literally

58:45

like we're going over every line and finding

58:47

every reference to everything. Like, you know, the

58:49

rap genius page for that thing is annotated

58:51

like an encyclopedia right now. Because people have

58:54

gone over the track that much. And

58:57

that's how much people are kind of like

58:59

surgically getting into it. And, you know, Kendrick made

59:01

the song with that in mind. You know, it's like

59:04

he kind of had the kind of, you know, people

59:06

have that kind of expectation of Kendrick's level of

59:08

writing. And, you know,

59:10

he definitely delivered on that song. That

59:13

was an example of Kendrick kind of like making

59:15

a play that his fans expected and

59:18

also Drake expected. But it

59:20

kind of worked in his favor, even

59:22

though Drake, like, you know, predictably saw

59:25

that coming. Like he's, oh, man, you

59:27

better come out with the quintuple entendre.

59:31

Whenever you eventually come out with your track. Well, I

59:33

mean, you know, he did, but it actually ended up

59:35

working in his favor. And I think like the most

59:37

sensible response from Drake, again, could have been

59:39

like, well, I'm going to overwhelm him

59:42

with a hit. I'm going to come out

59:44

with a track that people are going to play over and over

59:46

and over for totally different reasons, because that's my strength. That's what

59:48

I'm going to do. Instead, he dropped

59:50

this dense song that like, while

59:52

yes, there are a lot of like bombshell

59:54

allegations on family matters and there are some

59:57

catchy parts. I think the song starts off

59:59

really well. Um, I feel like

1:00:01

in terms of like keeping up momentum for the entirety

1:00:03

of the track, Drake doesn't do it as well as

1:00:05

Kendrick did on euphoria. And I feel like, you know,

1:00:07

one thing that we need to kind of like talk

1:00:09

about here, um, because we're

1:00:12

talking about favorites, but we also need to mention, uh, meet

1:00:15

the grams because obviously that's the track that like

1:00:17

diffused the power of that scared the shit out

1:00:19

of me. That's the one cleared the shit out

1:00:21

of me, bro. We, we, we

1:00:24

have to talk about how we

1:00:26

have to talk about why that song is

1:00:29

like one of the craziest diss tracks of all

1:00:31

time. And as proof by Kendrick is just on

1:00:33

a level of not

1:00:35

even just any hip hop artists, just

1:00:37

no other artists. Like that song is

1:00:39

a level of sadistically, psychotically weird that

1:00:42

like, again, you have to be like, Kyle,

1:00:45

you know, you're, you're, you're a product of the

1:00:47

2000s. I'm sure you remember like early in the

1:00:49

day, like how disturbing and dark and weird, like

1:00:51

a lot of M and M's old stuff used

1:00:54

to be, right? Totally. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

1:00:56

Yeah. Like, like that's this song is

1:00:58

M and M times five. Yeah. Like

1:01:00

you're literally writing a diss song about

1:01:02

somebody, but doing it through

1:01:04

a series of expose letters written

1:01:07

to various members of this

1:01:09

person's family, including that person's

1:01:12

children start starting off with his

1:01:14

song. Like that's sick. Yeah.

1:01:17

That's like, that's like so many levels of

1:01:19

sickness, but it just sort of like goes

1:01:21

to show how committed Kendrick was to like,

1:01:23

I'm going to rip this guy's head off.

1:01:25

Like I'm going to destroy him. And then,

1:01:27

and then the way the song ends with

1:01:29

like all of his vocals layering up in

1:01:31

a way that you would imagine if like,

1:01:33

you know, Drake is sweating in bed, like

1:01:35

tossing and turning like Kendrick in his head,

1:01:37

like, no, no, no, don't drop another track.

1:01:39

Like, man, it's crazy.

1:01:43

He writes his mom and says your son

1:01:45

should kill himself. Basically. That's one of the,

1:01:47

yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Like that song scared me, Crystal,

1:01:49

when I heard it, because it wasn't like, you could

1:01:52

tell Kendrick did not even make it to sound good.

1:01:54

He made it just to be like, I'm a fuck

1:01:56

you up, bro. Here's a letter to your son, a

1:01:58

letter to your supposed daughter, a letter to your mom,

1:02:01

it was dark. To me

1:02:03

that song is almost like the chess move response

1:02:05

to Drake trying to get into Kendrick's head with

1:02:07

the Tupac thing. Right.

1:02:09

That was like, okay, well you're going to

1:02:11

do a psychological warfare thing. Okay, fine.

1:02:13

I'm going to go psychological warfare. I'm

1:02:15

going to talk directly to this person and

1:02:17

that person and this other person. And

1:02:20

then I'm going to talk to

1:02:23

you on my own track like I'm

1:02:25

haunting you, like a ghost or something. It's

1:02:28

crazy. So from your perspective, how

1:02:30

would you rate all

1:02:32

the tracks best to worst? Like

1:02:36

you could either do it musically or overall, including like

1:02:38

the, you know, lyricists of them and the strength

1:02:40

of the distance or whatever, however you want to

1:02:42

think about such a rating. I

1:02:46

mean, you know, to me, the top three tracks are,

1:02:49

you know, not like us definitely.

1:02:51

And then probably underneath that meet the

1:02:53

grams just because, you know, again, it's

1:02:55

so crazy. That's so frightening and so

1:02:57

strange. And Kendrick is just

1:02:59

great for those kind of like wild concept tracks

1:03:01

that you're not hearing anybody do much less, you

1:03:04

know, hip hop artists. And

1:03:06

then, you know, under that I would probably

1:03:08

put like a euphoria

1:03:10

and pushups and then

1:03:13

underneath that, you know, family matters. And

1:03:16

then, you know, going even further, like a 616 in

1:03:18

LA. And then I

1:03:21

like, like that a lot. It's not like,

1:03:23

you know, a super, you know,

1:03:26

dense track in comparison with the other ones. Kendrick

1:03:28

is put out, but you know, it's got a

1:03:30

great beat. I love the metric of an instrument

1:03:32

on that track. Definitely. But

1:03:34

yeah, I mean, you know, in terms of

1:03:36

like just the sheer output and the creativity

1:03:39

and the density of information packed in all of

1:03:41

these tracks, like Kendrick comes out ahead and you

1:03:43

know, it's, it's kind of crazy that Kendrick over the

1:03:45

course of this gave us multiple sides of him that

1:03:47

we know he's had in him all along. You know,

1:03:49

if you're a Kendrick fan and you've been watching him

1:03:51

and you've been watching him up until this point, you

1:03:55

know, not like us

1:03:57

is throwing it back to

1:04:00

some of his biggest and catchiest

1:04:02

tracks as tracks that

1:04:04

instrumentally are way more, you know,

1:04:06

indebted to the instrumental styles

1:04:08

that are classic on the West

1:04:10

Coast in California,

1:04:12

hip-hop broadly. You

1:04:15

know, Family Matters, not Family Matters, but Meet

1:04:17

the Grams is, you know, just like a

1:04:19

crazy concept cut that Kendrick is

1:04:21

well known for, you know, be it a sing

1:04:23

about me or you know, we cry together, something

1:04:25

like that, you know, types of songs that just

1:04:29

other artists aren't writing because they have a certain

1:04:31

kind of mode of storytelling to them or a

1:04:33

certain kind of narrative angle that you're just not

1:04:35

hearing a lot of other people approach with. And,

1:04:37

you know, Euphoria is like

1:04:40

super, super, super old school, just

1:04:43

lyrical, just bars, just with

1:04:45

just wordplay, like section 80,

1:04:47

Eric Kendrick, where he's not even as sort

1:04:50

of like focused on the storytelling as much

1:04:52

as he is like, I'm a rapper's rapper

1:04:54

and I'm going to prove that to you

1:04:56

just with my pen game. Is

1:04:59

Drake now fighting for his career life? Do you

1:05:02

agree when people are like, Oh, Drake's done, he's

1:05:04

never coming back. Drake's over. Or do you think,

1:05:06

no, I'll drop some summer album that has some

1:05:08

vibes in it and then people will just go

1:05:10

right back to listening. What's your take on that?

1:05:14

No, I don't think Drake is, you

1:05:16

know, done honestly. You know,

1:05:18

I sort of wonder

1:05:21

why he even engaged in the speak to begin with. I

1:05:23

mean, obviously like it has a lot to do with pride

1:05:25

and it has a lot to do with ego. But the

1:05:27

thing is like Drake is not

1:05:29

the same kind of artist Kendrick is.

1:05:31

He didn't come up in the game

1:05:34

battling other rappers or proving himself

1:05:36

to, you know, be at the

1:05:38

top of his game in terms of pen game

1:05:40

and wordplay and you

1:05:43

know, his ability, his capacity to, you

1:05:45

know, just another person to his face and you

1:05:47

know, win the crowd over in that way. That's

1:05:49

not the kind of artist that he is. He

1:05:52

never was that kind of guy. He's never going to be

1:05:54

that kind of a guy. So why he would force himself

1:05:56

in a position where he's kind of like pretending to be

1:05:58

that dude. I don't

1:06:00

know, you know, Drake, what he does well

1:06:03

and how he's made his millions, uh,

1:06:06

that, you know, that, that, that

1:06:08

hit making machine that he is at the

1:06:10

forefront of, you know, Kendrick could put out

1:06:12

a million trillion disses against Drake and he's

1:06:15

never going to sort of threaten that, you

1:06:17

know, he's never going to rip away Drake's

1:06:19

capacity to continue coming out with those hits.

1:06:22

Um, and continue making tracks about the sort of

1:06:24

drama that tends to get people, you know, sort

1:06:26

of like, uh, sitting on the edge of their

1:06:29

seats, hanging on Drake's every word. Um, you

1:06:31

know, just, just kind of like, you know,

1:06:33

putting out those types of, uh, records at

1:06:35

the end of the day. I mean, I

1:06:37

think, you know, some of Kendrick's commentary might

1:06:40

create a situation or two down the road

1:06:42

where maybe people are like a little

1:06:45

less eager

1:06:47

to collaborate with Drake because they're thinking, Oh, I

1:06:49

don't want to be seen as like being taken

1:06:52

advantage of by this guy who doesn't really care

1:06:54

about the culture or something like that. However, with

1:06:57

a couple of albums, a couple of years, several

1:07:00

hits songs, uh, all that could completely

1:07:02

be erased and sort

1:07:04

of like flushed down the toilet in terms of

1:07:06

public perception, because, you know, in, in order for

1:07:08

any of this stuff to land, because, you know,

1:07:10

obviously like, uh, nothing as

1:07:12

a result of any of this, you know, legally

1:07:14

is happening right now. You know, nobody, nobody's going

1:07:16

to jail. No accusations, uh, have, have

1:07:19

been sort of 110%

1:07:21

founded. Nobody's pulling any receipts.

1:07:24

Um, all that we're sort of like, you know, hoping

1:07:26

for at this point in terms of anything on any

1:07:28

of these tracks, landing and sticking is

1:07:30

the public's capacity to remember any

1:07:33

of it. And

1:07:35

you know, uh, public memory, uh,

1:07:37

especially when it comes to popular music, especially when

1:07:39

it comes to Drake, a lot of the time,

1:07:42

uh, it's pretty bad, you know,

1:07:44

honestly, generally speaking.

1:07:46

So, but you know, while I think these diss tracks

1:07:48

are great, and I think in terms

1:07:50

of like the greater hip hop beef

1:07:53

cannon, like this is logged into history and this

1:07:55

is like never going in a way. And anytime

1:07:58

these sorts of conversations come up, it's mentioned

1:08:00

and it's gonna be mentioned immediately but

1:08:02

you know outside of that context and outside of

1:08:04

that discourse when the next hit Drake song comes

1:08:06

along most people are probably going to be listening

1:08:08

to it most people are probably gonna be checking

1:08:11

it out most people are probably going to be

1:08:13

giving it a try and if it vibes

1:08:15

well if it goes over good it's gonna be

1:08:17

getting played people are gonna be play listing it

1:08:19

people are gonna be talking about it. What

1:08:22

did you make of the shooting at Drake's house because I saw

1:08:24

a whole bunch of theories honestly Occam's Razor

1:08:26

the thing that popped to my mind is like this definitely

1:08:28

has something to do with the beef not that Kendrick was

1:08:30

directly doing it but that some psycho fan was like yeah

1:08:32

if he's a pedo I'm gonna go kill him right I

1:08:35

thought that but then you also heard this story about

1:08:38

how the weekend

1:08:40

his manager there was a shooting at his

1:08:43

place like a week before and then this

1:08:45

may have been related to that. What

1:08:48

was your theory on the shooting do we do we

1:08:50

know anything more than we did the first day? You

1:08:53

know honestly I have really like

1:08:57

no thoughts or comments on you know where

1:08:59

that is unfortunately and you know where that's

1:09:01

coming from you know

1:09:04

at the end of the day while I did

1:09:06

find this entire thing like really entertaining and I

1:09:09

thought it was great we have

1:09:11

to sort of like you know face the reality

1:09:13

that there are people

1:09:15

who are connected to these two who are

1:09:18

willing to go the extra mile and you

1:09:20

know do things that are sort of like

1:09:22

you know obviously one two three

1:09:25

four five steps too far and you

1:09:27

know they both have hardcore rabid fans

1:09:29

who you know might

1:09:31

act on their own

1:09:34

you know in sort of a rogue dangerous way

1:09:37

if this beef continued past this point as much

1:09:39

as I would have loved a proper response from

1:09:41

Drake I think pushing it any further than this

1:09:44

probably would have like had some of those weirdos coming

1:09:46

out of the woodwork and doing God knows what

1:09:48

else you know I'm just glad nobody as a

1:09:51

result of any of this seems

1:09:53

to have you know

1:09:55

directly as a result of this seems to have been

1:09:57

hurt I think that shooting was maybe more of like

1:10:00

like a personal thing at the

1:10:02

end of the day, it may not have been

1:10:04

sort of like, you know, directly related to the

1:10:06

beef, but maybe kind of, maybe

1:10:11

kind of a result of it in the sense that like, oh,

1:10:13

well, you know, like he has a lot going on right now.

1:10:15

Maybe he's not paying attention. Maybe we can

1:10:17

kind of like do this and pull this off because he's kind of

1:10:19

like, you know, distracted and he's got

1:10:21

other stuff going on. Did

1:10:24

this remind you, did you see like parallels

1:10:26

or echoes of any other historic rap beef

1:10:28

that came to mind for you? That's a good

1:10:30

question. You

1:10:32

know, I think the biggest and most comparable

1:10:35

is probably Jay-Z and Nas because,

1:10:39

you know, for

1:10:41

that era anyway, Jay-Z

1:10:43

and Nas represented, you know, similar wings

1:10:46

of, I mean, in terms

1:10:48

of similarity, there's way less daylight between Jay-Z

1:10:50

and Nas than there is between Kendrick and

1:10:52

Drake. But at the time, you

1:10:54

know, Jay-Z was seen as somebody

1:10:56

who's kind of like leading the way for

1:10:59

the genre commercially. And, you know, obviously Eminem

1:11:01

was also doing it at the time, but

1:11:03

a lot of people saw Jay-Z as more

1:11:05

of an authentic representation of hip hop and

1:11:07

the culture generally than they did Eminem. So,

1:11:11

you know, there were a lot of people

1:11:13

who kind of like, you know, took Nas

1:11:15

aside, not only because ether is just like really

1:11:18

great, really a killer track, but

1:11:20

Nas represented, you know, sort of like a more

1:11:22

authentic, you know, back to the

1:11:24

roots, you know, where he came

1:11:26

out with Illmatic, you know, sort

1:11:29

of representation of that wing of

1:11:31

hip hop. And, you know, he was like sort of in terms

1:11:33

of like numbers and public perception, he was

1:11:35

the underdog, you know, in

1:11:38

that fight. And, you know, a lot of people also

1:11:40

kind of sided with Kendrick in the midst of all

1:11:42

this because he also had kind of numbers wise and

1:11:44

underdog status in the midst of all this too.

1:11:47

Gotcha. Are there any

1:11:49

sort of like, is there a

1:11:51

moral of the story? Is there like

1:11:53

a broader societal takeaway other than just

1:11:56

like, that was interesting? I've been

1:11:59

thinking about that. like, you know, trying to

1:12:01

think of like, um, you

1:12:03

know, a video topic in terms of like, what's the

1:12:05

takeaway here? What did we really learn from all of

1:12:08

this at the end of the day? I

1:12:10

mean, honestly, like, I

1:12:12

think one of my biggest takeaways from all

1:12:15

of this is that, um, you know,

1:12:18

hip hop beef as we

1:12:20

kind of knew it or as it

1:12:22

originally kind of served its purpose in

1:12:24

the genre, I think is like pretty

1:12:26

much dead, honestly. And that's not to sort

1:12:29

of like say that, uh, this

1:12:31

whole thing was like, you know, irrelevant or

1:12:33

didn't, you know, sort of like gather attention.

1:12:35

Obviously it was this huge moment of cultural

1:12:37

singularity. Um, but at the

1:12:39

end of the day, when you actually like analyze

1:12:41

the content of the tracks and look at the

1:12:43

motivations that kind of like, you know, led to

1:12:46

all of this happening, uh, this, this goes way

1:12:48

beyond hip hop. This goes way beyond just like,

1:12:50

I think I'm a better, more superior artist than

1:12:52

you, or I'm a better writer than you. And

1:12:54

I'm going to outdo you on that front. Like

1:12:57

clearly this was like mostly

1:13:00

ego, mostly personal, and

1:13:02

mostly just like, you know, just

1:13:05

wanting the sheer destruction of your

1:13:07

competitor because you just don't like

1:13:10

them personally. Um, and on top

1:13:12

of that, like while obviously this, uh, gathered a

1:13:15

lot of attention, uh, the paradigms in which

1:13:17

hip hop beef was sort

1:13:19

of a thing previously, again, kind of

1:13:21

based on that artistic, uh, competition,

1:13:24

uh, which obviously, you

1:13:27

know, was necessary to agree because you had

1:13:29

artists who were kind of like duking it

1:13:31

out for, uh, shows

1:13:34

for contracts for respect within the community. Like, you

1:13:36

know, these days in the internet age, you don't

1:13:38

need to do or engage in any of that

1:13:40

in order to have a hit rock in order

1:13:43

to have a hit record, in order to have

1:13:45

an audience, in order to have a career, you

1:13:48

could just sort of play to the internet and give the crowd what they

1:13:50

want. And you could completely

1:13:52

circumvent the gatekeepers as they were

1:13:54

at one time within hip hop

1:13:56

and, uh, you

1:13:58

know, sort of, uh, uh, make a name

1:14:00

for yourself in that way. And on top of it, as

1:14:03

much attention as this has gathered, I

1:14:06

think Drake and Kendrick are part of like, you know,

1:14:08

kind of a dying breed of

1:14:11

artists who, you

1:14:13

know, remember an era of, you know,

1:14:15

beefs and diss tracks within hip hop,

1:14:17

you know, younger Zoomer

1:14:20

artists these days, and

1:14:23

you know, and the alphas who will be coming up underneath

1:14:25

them. For all of them, like

1:14:27

this stuff is going to be something they

1:14:29

read about in history books, and it's going

1:14:31

to be a distant memory. And that's it.

1:14:34

And, you know, a lot of the younger artists

1:14:36

who you see these days, especially a lot of

1:14:38

the, you know, young women who are getting bigger

1:14:40

and bigger in hip hop right now, because, you

1:14:42

know, the ladies have been kind of

1:14:45

building a much larger lane for themselves than they

1:14:47

ever have in the genre before. A lot

1:14:50

of them just don't really see as much of a point

1:14:53

in engaging in this stuff as,

1:14:55

you know, their predecessors did. Even

1:14:59

Nicki Minaj, her recent diss track to

1:15:01

Megan Thee Stallion just like completely flopped

1:15:03

and was just like complete, just trash

1:15:05

garbage, like one of her worst songs

1:15:08

ever. And she's written some pretty scathing

1:15:10

tracks in the past. But,

1:15:13

you know, I think like we're

1:15:15

seeing a real lack of like, you

1:15:18

know, genuine reasons for these kinds of

1:15:20

like flare ups to be happening. And

1:15:22

when they do occur, we're seeing like

1:15:24

super vast quality differences between each artist

1:15:26

in terms of, you know, which one

1:15:28

they're putting out, because obviously, you know,

1:15:30

Drake's final response to Kendrick was pretty

1:15:32

pitiful in terms of tone and delivery.

1:15:35

And it seemed like he was just

1:15:37

kind of giving up half the

1:15:39

time. And even, you know,

1:15:41

Drake's beef with Meek Mill, you

1:15:43

know, Meek's response to Drake, you know, part of

1:15:45

the only reason Drake wanted that is because Meek's

1:15:47

response was so terrible and lo-fi and garbage and

1:15:49

not put together all that well. It seemed like

1:15:51

he kind of threw it together. You know,

1:15:54

these years of beefs

1:15:57

that last months and months and months and

1:16:00

and months and it kind of goes cold and it

1:16:02

goes hot and you get a diss track randomly out

1:16:04

of nowhere. Like I think those days are gone. The

1:16:06

speed of the internet has like kind of changed the

1:16:08

whole paradigm of all of that. And

1:16:11

it's, it's kind of led to a, a

1:16:13

very different, a very different

1:16:15

era. So just

1:16:18

curious to get your reaction to this. Kendrick

1:16:21

is viewed as the more political

1:16:24

and like conscious rapper,

1:16:26

but I, and I looked it up to

1:16:28

make sure this was true. Cause it was based on

1:16:30

a tweet and I was like, I don't know if

1:16:32

that's right. Let me look this up. Turns out it

1:16:34

is. Apparently Kendrick did not sign for a ceasefire in

1:16:36

Gaza, but Drake did. Right.

1:16:40

Isn't that a little weird that he's viewed as

1:16:42

like the more political conscious guy, but like the

1:16:45

one who makes club bangers and is an arrogant

1:16:47

asshole was the one who wanted a ceasefire.

1:16:49

Isn't that weird? It's totally off brand. Oh

1:16:52

no, I, I agree. And a lot of people

1:16:55

have sort of like noted in the midst of

1:16:57

this huge beef. Obviously the genocide has been ongoing

1:16:59

and underneath both Kendrick and

1:17:01

Drake, uh, just as

1:17:03

this whole thing is winding down,

1:17:05

it's fricking Macklemore who drops a

1:17:07

prop. Macklemore

1:17:10

who drops a pro Palestine song out of

1:17:12

nowhere. Yeah. And he literally has a line

1:17:14

in there. I want to see fire fuck a response from

1:17:16

Drake. Right. Right. In my opinion,

1:17:18

Macklemore won the beef. In

1:17:21

his defense, he's had his share of political songs

1:17:23

over the years, but like, you know, he's, he's

1:17:25

still the thrift shop guy to a lot of

1:17:27

people, you know, so, you know, for, for, for

1:17:29

him, like a lot of people are like, well,

1:17:31

I didn't, I didn't know Macklemore had it in

1:17:33

him. I didn't know this is something he could

1:17:35

do. Um, but yeah, you

1:17:38

know, and unfortunately I feel like, uh, both

1:17:40

of them, but especially Kendrick, uh,

1:17:43

got a little exposed in that. However,

1:17:45

you know, I, I think over the years there

1:17:47

have been a lot of misconceptions over,

1:17:51

you know, uh, and,

1:17:53

and even Kendrick is guilty of this himself. Um,

1:17:56

in terms of like his perception in

1:17:58

the hip hop community. and what he

1:18:00

sort of like owes the hip hop

1:18:02

community in terms of like, you know,

1:18:04

commentary and advocacy of

1:18:07

certain political points and so on and so forth.

1:18:09

I mean, his last record, Mr. morale and the

1:18:11

big steppers, a big

1:18:13

part of that album narratively is all

1:18:16

about the

1:18:18

years of mental torture and guilt that

1:18:20

he put himself through, because he personally

1:18:22

felt like I had this platform, I

1:18:25

have this ability, I have this capacity to

1:18:27

influence people, to comment on things, to shed

1:18:30

light on things, and I'm doing

1:18:32

it in my music, and I'm pointing all

1:18:34

this stuff out, and I'm saying it, but

1:18:36

why isn't it working? Why aren't things changing?

1:18:38

What is going on? And, you know, he

1:18:40

describes kind of going into depressive spirals, sort

1:18:43

of seeing this disconnection between the limelight

1:18:46

that's on him, but the amount

1:18:48

of influence he actually has when

1:18:50

it comes to facilitating positive change

1:18:52

with his influence and with his

1:18:54

actions. And toward the end of the

1:18:57

record, he kind of like, gives

1:18:59

himself the ability to kind of let go

1:19:01

of that pressure, like I don't need to,

1:19:04

rake myself over the coals mentally

1:19:06

and emotionally in order to

1:19:09

feel validated as an artist and as a person.

1:19:11

I don't have to sort of like view my

1:19:13

inability to

1:19:16

impact things in the way that I wish I could

1:19:18

as like a personal moral failure or something

1:19:21

like that. Now, with that being said, it

1:19:23

would still be nice if he would say

1:19:25

something, you know, at

1:19:28

the end of the day, like I don't feel like, you know, having

1:19:31

acknowledged all of that, and it is true,

1:19:33

you know, Kendrick doesn't need to have this

1:19:35

savior complex. And he's definitely, again, guilty of

1:19:37

having one a little bit at

1:19:39

times over the course of his career. But,

1:19:42

you know, you can sidestep having

1:19:44

a savior complex and

1:19:47

still comment on what is like

1:19:49

the worst genocide that we've seen

1:19:51

in our lifetime. You

1:19:53

know, you can be on your mental health

1:19:56

journey and still acknowledge the

1:19:58

horrors that are going on. So

1:20:01

let's end on this. Tell everybody the story. I

1:20:03

don't know if you know this, Crystal. Didn't

1:20:05

Drake DM you and he was really mad

1:20:07

that like you gave his album a bad

1:20:10

review? Yeah,

1:20:12

Drake was mad over review at one time

1:20:14

and he just sort of like sent me

1:20:16

a DM in the middle of the night

1:20:18

while I was working out for some reason.

1:20:20

I was just on his mind like weeks

1:20:22

and weeks and weeks after having reviewed anything

1:20:24

with his. What do you say? What

1:20:27

do you say? And would you have to reply? Yeah,

1:20:29

that's amazing. The

1:20:32

funny thing about it is like he dissed

1:20:34

me using my own rating system. Like

1:20:36

so he clearly watches my

1:20:39

videos. That's why I cut so

1:20:41

deep, obviously. Right. No, exactly.

1:20:43

So he said he scored

1:20:45

me like I was an album. He said you're a light

1:20:47

one. And

1:20:51

then like, I mean, it's sort of

1:20:53

funny watching all of this because like this

1:20:55

is my own personal drape beef that I won.

1:21:01

He sent me this message. I didn't respond. I didn't say

1:21:03

anything. I just like kind of read it and I just

1:21:05

left it at that. And I just said,

1:21:07

you know, my content brain was churning and I was

1:21:09

like, well, I need to talk about this. I need

1:21:11

to say something. But the thing is, you know, as

1:21:14

Kyle knows, like it's it's it's bad form to

1:21:16

just sort of like go in, leak random DMS

1:21:18

on the Internet. You look like a jerk, you know,

1:21:20

and at the end of the day, like, you know,

1:21:23

it would look desperate. And in

1:21:25

addition to that, it

1:21:28

would sort of like leave me at a position where a

1:21:30

lot of his fans could potentially be like, oh, you photoshopped that.

1:21:32

Or that's fake or that doesn't

1:21:35

know you. Why would Drake message you in the middle of the night?

1:21:37

So I was like, okay, so

1:21:39

he doesn't like me. And from what

1:21:41

I can see from this exchange

1:21:43

here, he clearly watches me. Maybe

1:21:46

he was watching me closer than he watched Kendrick in the midst of his

1:21:48

beef with him. So

1:21:50

I'm going to do a video acknowledging this, but

1:21:53

I'm going to deliver in such a way where it's

1:21:55

so fake and it's so silly and it's so made

1:21:57

up that there's no way anybody who's reasonable

1:21:59

with. looking at this and be like, Oh

1:22:01

yeah, that's totally a thing that he's like, you

1:22:03

know, genuinely putting out there. So what me and

1:22:06

my editor did was we said, Hey,

1:22:08

Drake, message me in the middle of the night. And

1:22:10

I want to show you guys what he sent me. It's really

1:22:12

important. And once you see, I'm not usually this guy leaks DMS

1:22:15

or anything like that, but once you see what he sent me,

1:22:17

you're going to see why I would have to share it with

1:22:19

the world. So we kind of made

1:22:21

up this fake message that, you know, gives me

1:22:23

a few compliments. And then it goes into a

1:22:25

vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe. And

1:22:28

so then I go over and I start reading the recipe and I'm like, Oh,

1:22:30

it's, you know, it's really nice that he would send

1:22:32

me this message on a track, this recipe, so

1:22:35

on and so forth. And a lot of people on my

1:22:37

channel saw it and were like, okay, that's just a silly

1:22:39

troll video. You know what I mean? Like Anthony's being crazy.

1:22:41

He's just kind of trolling on his channel. Like he does

1:22:43

every once in a while. They're just making some stuff up

1:22:46

and being kind of a clown because why would

1:22:48

Drake send him a chocolate chip, chip cookie recipe

1:22:50

in the middle of the night? That's ridiculous. So

1:22:53

some people kind of like started talking about it on Twitter

1:22:55

and kind of making fun and kind of, you know, uh,

1:22:58

making it into a bit of a low key, very

1:23:00

low key viral moment. But

1:23:03

apparently this was enough for Drake to

1:23:05

look at that video and be like, well,

1:23:07

shit, I don't want anyone to think I

1:23:09

would send this dude a chocolate chip cookie. Actual

1:23:13

DMS that I sent him. Oh my God.

1:23:15

What a fragile. Oh my God. You were

1:23:17

Kendrick in this beef. You baited him and

1:23:20

it worked. That's amazing. Yeah. Maybe

1:23:22

you saw that and was like, Oh, I could do

1:23:24

something similar. Weaknesses

1:23:30

to his Instagram story. He posted the

1:23:32

real DMS and what was even funnier

1:23:34

about it in context was that I

1:23:37

didn't respond. So it's Drake's messages to

1:23:39

me. And then underneath it, it says read 24 hours ago. And

1:23:41

it's like, this

1:23:44

dude left you on red. He's

1:23:49

so petty. It's amazing. Oh my God.

1:23:52

Yeah. This is why you don't watch

1:23:54

the reaction video. Don't read the comments. Keep

1:23:57

your mental health, right? Yeah. Jesus Christ.

1:24:00

That's so funny end up DMing random people in the

1:24:02

middle of the night. What a great story. That was

1:24:04

awesome Look, there's

1:24:07

enough nasty stuff said about me just over my music

1:24:09

reviews on the internet that I could just read comments

1:24:11

all day If I wanted to oh, yeah end of

1:24:13

the day you have to sort of like block yourself

1:24:15

at one point or you go nuts Yeah,

1:24:18

music is so subjective. It's like the perfect

1:24:20

example where people can have like really strong

1:24:22

disagreements Nobody's right. It's just you like this

1:24:24

and you like this Yeah, and even

1:24:27

though obviously it's like less consequential

1:24:29

than your opinion about a genocide

1:24:31

For example, people have very strongly

1:24:33

help you that they view as

1:24:35

like absolute rock-solid fact. No, so Super

1:24:38

fun chatting with you Anthony about all of this.

1:24:41

Thank you so much for spending some time with

1:24:43

us today It's great to tell it be again. Tell everybody where

1:24:45

they can find you YouTube

1:24:47

comm slash the needle drop youtube comm

1:24:50

slash Fantano also the needle drop on

1:24:52

twitch a Fantano on Instagram

1:24:55

the needle talk on Tick-tock

1:24:58

we're everywhere. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks

1:25:00

for joining us man. It was awesome. Thanks

1:25:04

All right, that's Anthony Fantano fun conversation

1:25:06

that story then so fun Yeah,

1:25:09

I mean I can't imagine I can't

1:25:11

imagine being a music reviewer on YouTube and

1:25:13

then Drake DM you like How

1:25:16

dare you bro? Yeah, but he's right Like

1:25:19

he must have been a fan of the channel and he just

1:25:21

like felt betrayed, you know Definitely.

1:25:24

Yeah, definitely Don't

1:25:26

look at the comments. So don't look at

1:25:28

him. So thin-skinned I mean look in his

1:25:30

defense were all that thin-skinned, but who manages

1:25:32

it? Well, you got a protector You got

1:25:34

to manage it. Well by not immersing yourself

1:25:36

in that. Yeah, cuz we're all just like

1:25:38

anybody else So somebody said tells me like

1:25:40

I'm wrong about this rev. Fuck you. I'm

1:25:42

right You know what I mean? Like I

1:25:44

have everybody has that yeah, you just got

1:25:47

to manage it You can't dive into the

1:25:49

into the deep end. Yeah, it's so true

1:25:51

I've people talk about like thin skin

1:25:53

versus thick skin I think you're right that there

1:25:55

is not a lot of difference between most

1:25:57

people and like how much they can weather that

1:25:59

stuff It's more about their coping strategies and

1:26:01

their in ability to

1:26:04

insulate themselves. Yeah, it's like self-discipline,

1:26:06

right? It's a beautiful to but what you

1:26:08

find is resist going into the comments. What you

1:26:10

find is though It's glorious once you actually do

1:26:12

it. Absolutely people don't realize that they don't realize

1:26:14

that they really think like no I really want

1:26:16

to read these things. I have to read these

1:26:18

things. I have to look at all the criticism

1:26:20

We know people like that who can't help but

1:26:23

look at it Well, it's like you don't get

1:26:25

it you will be happier if you don't do

1:26:27

it. You understand this is better for you Yeah,

1:26:29

it's I think it's because you know, you're

1:26:31

also gonna see positive things and so like

1:26:33

so they're fishing for the positives Yeah, so

1:26:36

you get a little you know, you get

1:26:38

a little hit when you get the positive

1:26:40

comments But that is vastly outweighed

1:26:42

by the positive comments go out of your

1:26:44

brain instantly Yeah, it's really fucked up how we're wired in

1:26:46

it Yeah And then the one you know

1:26:49

The one negative or the one thing that

1:26:51

happens to like strike a sensitive spot that

1:26:53

shit will stay with you And so it's

1:26:55

just not worth that that risk that balance.

1:26:57

Oh yeah True how messed up or wired

1:26:59

that like you see a positive comment. You're like, that's

1:27:01

how it should be not like

1:27:03

oh, thank you I'm genuinely appreciative. Let me think about

1:27:05

this for an hour. Well great Like

1:27:09

okay next Yeah,

1:27:15

I need to DM this person at 2 a.m

1:27:17

But I'm happy for Drake's pettiness because if he

1:27:19

wasn't petty we wouldn't have gotten this beef, you

1:27:21

know Yeah, the line he really went in on was

1:27:23

from like that and it was fucked the big three.

1:27:25

There's only big me Yeah, what's that your name? Which

1:27:27

wasn't that your name? Yeah, you know but

1:27:31

I think what Anthony was talking about that this

1:27:33

had like This had

1:27:35

built up inside Drake for a long time

1:27:37

and because this is all been this has

1:27:40

always been the you know The

1:27:42

knock on him is that you're you know You're

1:27:44

just this commercial success that it's not really you

1:27:46

and you don't really fit You know with the

1:27:48

lung and it's sort of fake and whatever and

1:27:51

so and you're too soft, etc And

1:27:53

so it like it's it hit in

1:27:55

a soft place apparently there apparently

1:27:57

Lil Wayne and Birdman told Drake

1:28:00

early on, you need

1:28:02

to just be yourself. Don't

1:28:04

come out here and try to

1:28:06

rap like you're from New Orleans

1:28:08

and Louisiana with Wayne growing

1:28:11

up in a gang environment and whatnot. Don't

1:28:13

do that. You need to rap about whatever

1:28:15

you want to rap about. Don't try to be hard. They

1:28:17

told him that. But now I've

1:28:19

seen some videos that say outright that he's like,

1:28:22

Drake is like mobbed up in Toronto. Like

1:28:24

he actually is mobbed up now. Like

1:28:27

you're a multi, multi, multi-millionaire. Why

1:28:29

would you do that? Trying to live that life, right?

1:28:31

That the fucking the one that you everybody thinks of

1:28:33

when you think of rappers. Insecurity complex, like

1:28:35

inability. I mean, it just it is

1:28:37

amazing because you think here's a guy

1:28:40

who's like so successful. I

1:28:42

mean, just unbelievably successful and over many

1:28:44

years, right, is that longevity? It's not

1:28:46

like he was a flash in the

1:28:49

pan and still obviously

1:28:52

so insecure. And I

1:28:54

mean, Kendrick clearly the same, right? Clearly

1:28:56

there was so much like drives people like

1:28:58

that. Yeah, so much resent, so much

1:29:00

bitterness, so much insecurity about the fact

1:29:02

that yes, I'm looked

1:29:04

at in this way and yes, I'm phenomenally

1:29:07

accessible, successful and have been for a while.

1:29:09

But this other guy, he's, you

1:29:11

know, more commercially successful and I don't

1:29:13

think that's fair. And it's like it's

1:29:17

getting to him. Well, I wonder what

1:29:19

he goes is like now because now

1:29:21

he did hop Drake on the charts.

1:29:24

Not like us, number one. Yeah, I think a number of

1:29:26

his songs are above Drake's now. So he did get that

1:29:28

commercial success from being the biggest asshole. So the lesson he's

1:29:30

going to learn is I'm going to be a fucking asshole.

1:29:32

I wouldn't be surprised to see more Kendrick boom forward.

1:29:35

True. But I mean, you know, if

1:29:37

if you have that like insecurity

1:29:39

inside of you, none of the

1:29:41

external validators are ultimately going to cure that. Oh,

1:29:43

of course not. No. So you may. I'm sure he

1:29:45

feels good about it right now. But that

1:29:48

wears off very quickly and you're left with whatever

1:29:50

inner turmoil is going on. If he still has five

1:29:53

songs in the chamber, he's sitting there thinking, I

1:29:55

want to drop another one. I want to drop another

1:29:57

one. Get that. Endorphin

1:30:00

hit again, but now the adulation diminishing

1:30:02

returns at a certain point. Yeah, he's already

1:30:05

buried He's already done why everybody acknowledges you

1:30:07

won and you can flip it like

1:30:09

if you come across too desperate and

1:30:11

too thirsty for that next like You

1:30:14

know proud adulation then that starts to

1:30:16

come off a different way, right? That's

1:30:18

right So and then it's like oh well Drake's just living rent free

1:30:20

in your head all the time like he's moved on and you're

1:30:22

still On this everything's everything's fluid nothing to step.

1:30:24

Yeah, that's exactly right. All right guys. We love

1:30:26

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