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could you do me a quick favor if you're listening to this please hit the follow or subscribe button it helps more than you know and we invite subscribers in
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every month to watch the show in person if i knew now what i knew then i would have done a different
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journey dance album dj of the year diplo diplo and i just remember i did this whole circuit working all these young rappers they were like really young they were like 19 20. and
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these rappers all started to die you know little peep overdosed ex was was shot nobody really cares about like all
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the adoration you get you care about the people that don't like you and that you get caught up in that it's not a consistent paycheck music
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never is and it wasn't for me for three four years one month i'm not doing good i don't care i can't pay rent i'm
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homeless what's the the sacrifice or the cost in terms of like personal life balance i have to answer that
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[Music] wes yeah um whenever i do this podcast up i always get really intrigued by the the
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formative years of someone's life and in your story um it seemed like a very very humble
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beginning when i look at where you started under the age of 14 um i couldn't quite piece together
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myself obviously how that early upbringing had led you to becoming who you are today
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is there is there anything when from below the age of say like 14 that you can point at and say if that hadn't
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happened or if that if i hadn't had that experience or that interaction with a family member or grandfather whatever it
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might be i i don't think i would be here today i didn't start really producing releasing music till like my
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mid-20s because it was pretty late i was doing things but not actually at a level where i quit my job and it's my main
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source of income but when i was younger um i was a pretty bad kid i was bouncing from high schools
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in different middle schools and i was i was actually sent to a military school at one point at like that age
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like 14. um and i even got expelled from there and then like that was like the last my
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my last shot right and i came back they let me back in because it cost my family like a lot of money was like
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three thousand dollars for me to go there because i was i was getting sent at every school but going to military
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school maybe if anything it taught me how to like if i was gonna do something criminal or like something bad like it was bad be a little smarter about it if anything somebody there was like criminal the whole military school was
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just a bunch of terrible kids and they were like really knew what they were doing um so if anything i kind of like
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it was like learning from the school of hard knocks you know but i think being in military school even
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that was only like for one year um and my father he was a vietnam vet and you know i think i can attribute his his concept of discipline to it you know
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like no matter how bad i was how much i disagree with my father he gave me the most complex
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rules of what discipline means what it what it is to apply in whatever you're doing and i didn't realize that
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until i was older that you know these what what makes my story successful what makes me a better dj or what makes me a
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better songwriter it really i don't have the technical abilities but i have i always apply myself to find a
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goal you know and i really feel like that that's what my father gave me before before i turned into an adult because
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it's just something i had inside me that separated me from everybody else when i got into the music business
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work ethic was such a clear thread throughout your story like relentless almost at times it seems somewhat
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obsessive work ethic and it's funny because when i hear about your early upbringing i guess my assumption is
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because it sounds quite similar to mine getting kicked out of school and and being the only kid out of four siblings
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that was like always getting bad grades always in exclusion were people did people around you think you were going
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nowhere at that point yeah i mean even until the mid-20s my father was like how did you buy this house like how did you
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what are you doing like there's no there's no way possibly you're making money with music like it's like there's just no possible
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way and i went to college i went for um i went to ucf i got a little community college because i couldn't afford like a
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real school i did two years there just basically just getting just being in a school so i could have
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something to advance forward and then with the temple university in philly and i ended up dropping out that school but i went for anthropology and filmmaking
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so it was like a really two other degrees that would literally turn into no job but i was obsessed with
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documentary filmmaking i thought that would be something i could i could do i was obsessed with culture i was obsessed with humans and people and the study of
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culture and i was when i was a young person i was reading national geographic all the time and watching documentaries so that was something i was like how do
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i apply that you know and my father's also like this is a huge mistake what are you doing what about
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accounting that's a great degree to have um in the end i think what i'd learned at that university was um because in the film program it was like
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there was a lot of creative avenues i could learn from and the people who were professors were almost like filmmakers
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that didn't make it and they have to be professors it kind of feels like so like what am i doing here i want to learn these people aren't even in the business
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you know so the real business is like going out and making it yourself and i think i just did that set third year i
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was like i'm out of school but i kind of wish i had dropped out of college earlier
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and had a head start because it took you a while when you're paying your college tuition and working and it's so time
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consuming and then eventually i started to to to do music and do little odd jobs like djing to where i was like oh i can
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kind of like quit my jobs now and also like yeah i think if i knew now what i knew then i would
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have done a different journey but i think that's what makes you who you are you know no matter how long it takes and eventually you make
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that decision to sort of start heading towards music right um even though it's not paying you at all and i was reading
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about the jobs you were doing in that period of your life you were worked at a zoo at one point yeah you were a social
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worker at one point yeah how long did that period of your life when you'd made the decision to move towards music and that music was going to be your thing
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how long was that it definitely wasn't i mean i at 22 years old i was already working
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like nine to fives you know it was it was like the social work job was my first job as like this is a job that
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feels good to do like you know i'm working with children i was going between teaching kids and then after school program and just felt
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like okay this is cool um it feels like i'm doing something for somebody instead of working at like
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subway and making money for the head of subway which is kind of like a waste of my energy but working with kids i felt a
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little bit like i i felt fulfilled you know i think but then you run into the bureaucracy of of i was in a city like philadelphia so it was just like so much corruption even
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in like this the social work world it was crazy um eventually i was getting beaten down at
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that job too i was like this is this is my life like 22 i'm like this is this is all i can look forward to is like building my way into like this job or
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this job and i think i started djing on the side uh at parties and learning from the djs there because philadelphia is a famous city for djing it's like culturally one of the most important cities in america um for
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hip-hop for djing and i just started doing parties and then i saw what you do if you do your own party like you can invest invest in yourself and promote a party and you take everything right so i started learning
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small little business acumen from just doing parties and then eventually i started i can quit
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my job i can make it it was a huge step because at that point you don't know when you're doing music and parties full-time
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it's literally up to you to how much you're working or what you're doing to keep the money flowing to pay the rent if i don't one month i'm not doing good
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i don't care i can't pay rent i'm homeless um it's not a consistent paycheck music never is and it wasn't
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for me for probably three four years but yeah it took it just it's just literally
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just putting your boots to the ground and like doing the work and like failing at it and learning what makes you better
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what makes you more money like what's how do you grow this business even in these little small steps that's kind of
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what i did in those those first years my career and i wasn't even really making my own music yet i was just djing and making mixtapes and
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making edits and learning how to use computers still like i had nobody to teach me i was buying hardware or you know in high school
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shoplifting from sam goody and sam ash and like guitar center like samplers to use so it really just came down to
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just the grind to figure out what works and what doesn't it was so evident even when i was hearing about you like in the record stores and ultimately selling a
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record to can are they vinyls you were selling to canadian samples and stuff but throughout that even like you're the
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story about you reading was it william faulconer's book yeah and you're you had this clear
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hunger for learning like teaching yourself how to make music teaching yourself computers teaching
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yourself the business side of things most people don't have a predisposition just to figure stuff out yeah and that
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again when i'm trying to figure out exactly how you became this global superstar i'm like that feels to be a
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consistent thread throughout your story as well that learning hunger i think when you think about what a dj is uh you
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know now they're like david guetta they're headlining festivals or even me like i'm headlining my own shows but back when i was growing up
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you know the big dj's from say detroit like uh the magician or like you know after
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bambada people that were djs were like the selectors they were like the guys who did all the work to know
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what music is there what this music is how this music exists and they were like kind of the cultural benchmark they were
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the guys who cataloged everything for to distribute in the scene right um so i think i loved that like that was like i wanna i love music like i love what it is i loved and i went to parties and i
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remember seeing people like quest love and like cash money and these dj's like carson baker playing crazy records like
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playing fella cootie and then playing like um you know a disco record and then playing
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something new like a local hip-hop record and i was like and then they playing like babe ruth like an old rock and roll record i was i was so obsessed
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with how they could connect these things that don't make any sense musically and that's what i always thought was the
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great i think story of what djs do is they're like guys who can process all this culture and give it to
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you in a certain way and now it's more streamlined like you're gonna go to house party hear house music you're gonna go to like a bastion party here
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dance hall but the really special djs were able to like do everything and so i think when i learned that was like a skill set
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i started looking at vinyl i started learning about different music i would like ask djs what is that record be playing who are these artists like what
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is feather cootie where's where's nigeria where do they make music like what's it sound like you know then i'm like we're the producers like oh uh
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the guy from the who went to nigeria and was a drummer there then he went back and did this and then oh james brown heard this guy and then he hired another
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drummer this is like became like a web of music i started to follow everything and read lander notes and then i just
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was obsessed with with gaining all the knowledge about music whatever i could and using that to apply to being a dj
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that obsession just led me to being a record collector you know like i said i traveled a little bit at the end of my
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university i went to india with one of my professors to work on a documentary and um the border of pakistan in india is
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called uh in gujarat it was like this this little uh kind of like a valley called the round of kuch it was a huge earthquake
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there i think around 2000 and i was there doing some sort of building work and you know working with
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uh red cross and things like that and then i just kind of bounced and took a motorcycle and just went all over india
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and just explored my own and i bought a bunch of vinyl at the time the most expensive record in the world were these beetle 78s they were like beetles
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records but at you find good ones in india they only make money if you find good ones they're worth like a thousand to a couple
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thousand dollars but i was finding indian soundtracks i was finding things like um there's a wreck a classic indian
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soundtrack called chalamar with like crazy like spy themes and like break beats on it at the time if you find one
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of those at a record shop pay like a you know a couple rupees you could bring it back to london and sell it at like
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poland street for like you know 300 pounds so that was like this weird hack i found like traveling and buying
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records i did it in india i did it in philadelphia i would go to new jersey i go to new york i would buy record old
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records and sell it to different record collectors you know nick quest loves one of my first guys i sold to i sold records to kanye west when he first
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started producing um collecting records was like a certain business and on ebay that was another
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hustle i had like selling things that i buy flea market stuff and selling ebay a lot of it was vinyl correct
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one of the one of the thing to get things again that's so um obvious and apparent with you which is kind of a
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thread that kind of weaves between many of my guests specifically comedians for some reason because comedians they at some point you see this decision they've
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made to like leave the city leave like their job in finance and pursue this thing that has no apparent chance of
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making them any money at all but they just follow this like passionate obsession they spend a year going up and down the country working for nothing
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because they're obsessed with comedy for whatever reason and a lot of young people when they think about being a dj or an entrepreneur or whatever they
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think to themselves okay i want the admiration of standing there and all these people clapping for me and the money yeah but you were so clearly led
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by this like unbelievably obsessive passion which seems actually to be if i was to say 95 of my guests um followed
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one path it would definitely be they didn't really care about the outcome they cared about like the passion and
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the pursuit of the passion yeah that's so clear with you right i mean the beginning was definitely a hustle like i love music and it saved me from you know
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when i even in high school i you know i moved from different high school to high school and i didn't have a friend group so i kind of was like leaning towards i
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want to play music but i couldn't my parents wouldn't buy me a guitar like i didn't even know how to play i was like how am i going to learn a guitar you
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know i'm going to learn piano but i like was like djing that's like the future of music like
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my it was like turntablism was really big i remember being in like 16 being like i'm gonna buy record players that's
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what i'm gonna buy that's like that's what i'm gonna do as a as like a creative person this is like a futuristic way to do
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things so i i leaned into that started learning what a dj was but in the beginning yeah
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i had to do the groundwork to know what it is i'm going to play like what it is that the music comes from where was this
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music at where do i buy the records what do the crowds react to etcetera etcetera so yeah
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this formative years i spent time grinding but then eventually i was like okay how do i make money out of this and yes i want to play for a crowd and they
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saw my adoration yes i want to meet girls of course that happens later and that's another drive but in the beginning i just i
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didn't really expect to have a job out of it you know do you think you would have been
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as successful as you are if you if someone had taught you how to make music and you'd been really mentored by
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someone because sometimes that hurts innovation and creativity if there's a if convention is too involved
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yeah you know what i mean i don't mean because i see nowadays like kids can literally learn and copy any style of music in a day because they have a
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tutorial it's so easy it's really easy and i wish i had that but then at the same time i wouldn't have i wouldn't have had such a definitive like who i am
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and if i were when people always ask me when i do radio shows like what advice you give to young djs and it's like always the same thing like what makes
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yourself unique like what what really makes you different because i could throw a rock and i'm going to
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hit a dj or artist in the head in london like there's somebody here it's like i'm not talking about you
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right but it's so easy like i literally get demos all the time like what i don't even care i don't even pay attention i used to actually like try to
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listen to demos i'm like this is all the same like people are doing the same thing over and over again like you know whether whatever city you're in
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there's like a thing and every once while you get like a special person that comes out of nowhere and you're like wow that's unique like but really what what
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is it like for me you were talking about william faulkner i really tapped into like my southern heritage when i was younger i was like
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what i loved like miami based music growing up in florida i loved like um you know the crunk scene the bouncing in
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new orleans i grew up in tennessee for a couple years so i loved like memphis rap was like my favorite thing so when i
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went to the east coast none of that stuff was happening like nobody listened to that music so i was like let me bring this to the east coast let me start playing at my parties and it took off
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like all this new sounds i brought even though they were just like a one-hour flight down south to hear miami-based music no one listened to it in philly so
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i was playing the stuff mixed with like 80s records and that was like my brand i was the guy that was like doing this mashup culture
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and so nobody else had that party there was like urban parties they'd be playing hip-hop there would be you know rock and roll parties playing like glam rock and
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you could dance to it there would be like high-end parties playing house music but nobody was playing for like the art school kids and the hipsters the time
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because it was pre-hipster it wasn't a word yet and i was like that's my market and i was like no one's tapped into this let me go ahead and do this you know in
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every style my every every little venture i've done as a musician has been like why is the one in this market like even when i do major laser
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it was like reggae and dancehall we were doing but nobody was really doing it in the clubs in america there was like if you go to like philly you want to see
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vibes cartel you you have to go to like this one ghetto club in like lancaster and it's like only jamaicans there and i'm like
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this is such crazy music like why don't we do this on another level like why don't we work with some of these artists and do bigger records and so i was like
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no one's doing dance hall let's do it this project so everywhere i went i was like experimenting like what how do i do this
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and kind of make it my own or how do i like work this into my sets and um it's been like a journey you know
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this is 20 years now i'm doing this since i played at my first show at fabric and it feels like
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i've done so many if you're a fan of mine and you follow me for 20 years it's a really tough journey because it's like i've done
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you're gonna go to reggae music you're gonna go to country music now you're gonna go to deep house you're gonna go this way that's way but a few people
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actually go with me and follow my career so um you know i think that's what makes me a
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one-of-a-kind person i guess so back to my my point when young people give me ask me questions of like what is it to
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what kind of advice i can give you i'm like what find like a really unique thing and just and just lean into that lean into that
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so hard like figure out even if it feels weird just make it make sense you know make it make it work for you because
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otherwise you're just going to be one and one of a hundred like clones of different djs different rappers if it
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feels weird is that sometimes also an indication that there's a big opportunity there because it's it's yet
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to break or it's yet to be discovered so like weirdness might be a 100 yeah more now than ever back then it was like i
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mean even djs wasn't a thing when i started doing it like you would you wouldn't dj being a dj wasn't a career
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it was like there's a few guys on the radio in europe is different there was a dj culture here but in america there wasn't
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like a job description called dj like you wouldn't think there wasn't djs on the radio weren't they weren't featuring on their music
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um now it's pretty commonplace but but just being dj was unique for me but nowadays since there's so much information all the time so much media
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there's so much artists fighting for your eyeballs and your ears on tick tock and instagram it's more than ever important to have something like wow i gotta go look at that again because
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it's like just having a catchy hook's not enough everybody has a cat like there's a thousand catchy hooks you can just go
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and buy them literally at the market it's like not special one thing that really surprised me about you as well is that you're
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quite um i don't know whether this is humble about your talent but when i've seen in
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multiple interviews when you're asked what the biggest misconception is about you one of them you said is that that
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i'm talented and i've heard you say a number of times that you're faking it or that you're still
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looking for the some kind of like validation that you're a real you know and even at the start this conversation
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you said i'm not technically the best or yeah what is that is that impostor syndrome what is that no i think i've always been like more of
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a conceptual artist like you know i think of music and concepts i think of music as like oh it's like a math problem you know like
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how does this add to this how do i make it work you know it's always been like a riddle every time i try to think of like what to combine things
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now it's a little easier because i'm like i'm doing this kind of dance album and i know exactly what works because i'm using these records and i'm making
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you know collaborations with friends of mine artists but when i was younger i literally my first album was called uh
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florida it was on it was on ninja tune and it's so weird like i remember being just like so stoned and just up
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and like making this record and like people still hit me back like that record was a classic i'm like what are you talking about it was like crazy
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chaos it was like me just like in my room in orlando like trying to figure out how to i wasn't even things weren't even in key like i'm sampling on this
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like two channel little like a kai s20 sampler like that thing worked and um laying things out like if you know anything about dws like workstations like they're so complex like logic ableton back then you used something
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called cool edit pro and there wasn't even like a piano roll or anything i just had like windows like photoshop
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when you just like i just layered the loops on top of each other and sequenced it in one long window because
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i couldn't it was just it was the worst way to work ever but i learned this ass backwards way that kind of gave me a
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little flavor i guess but i never was like a a a musician you know like i never i
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never mastered an instrument and i always thought djing i never was a good turntable it's like i mean if you put me in my room with like a track or like dj
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craze that's embarrassing those guys are like they're like magicians you know but i thought
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i'm the guy with like ideas and how do i apply those ideas and it became easy with as the technology advanced like i'm
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like oh these programs make it a lot easier for me i don't need to like play my midi keyboard i don't need to be scott storch you know i can just like
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literally see the audio ableton's my favorite sc audio and i can work with raw audio it's
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my mind works that way so i think yeah i'm more of a conceptual person than i am like a a like a digital auteur even with even with production i mean i always say like
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skrillex is like the guy that blew my mind like he uses like a computer like a like a grand piano like he just does
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it's the craziest thing he does you know it's so i think there's people that are in my generation that are like those savants and i'm not that but i i kind of
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mixed my talent for new new sounds and a talent for songwriting to make like who i am but but to say that you're you're faking it and uh i mean maybe it was a joke but
00:21:23
yeah to describe it as the biggest misconception i've been talking about djing because i mean literally it's probably like the most uh
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it's people will ask me like how to you know like how to do it or to do it it's such a you can learn in 10 minutes like how to do the technical sides you know
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um was i thinking that i mean no because at the end of the day what i think makes dj special that i
00:21:42
explained earlier is that you have this hit you have to have history that's what makes it special i think it's why you have dj careers in in london especially
00:21:50
these guys are like david rodigan you know he's like a guy who's like in his like late 60s i'm hoping agent
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maybe but he's been doing this since he was interviewing bob marley like he's a and he still rocks parties playing like
00:22:01
selecting the perfect records because he has the skill set like he knows exactly he can read a crowd in like southwest
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london he can go to jamaica he can go to like italy you could play the right songs the right time so
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um there's something intrinsically beautiful about you know being a dj but yeah some things it feels like i'm
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faking it but i mean even in the beginning i faked it to like get get in the studio you know that's
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what i did to like to to have my foot in the door you know quick one as the seasons have begun to
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change so has my diet and um right now i'm just going to be completely honest with you i'm starting to think a lot about
00:22:37
slimming down a little bit because over the last couple of probably the last four or five months my diet has been
00:22:42
pretty bad um and it started to show a little bit really over the last two months i go to the gym about 80 of the
00:22:48
time so i track it with 10 of my friends in a whatsapp group and this tracker online that we all use together we call
00:22:54
it fitness blockchain and i'm currently at 81 percent um so 81 of the days i've done a workout
00:23:01
in the last 150 days right so i'm going to the gym about six times a week that's been a little bit impacted by the derivatio live tour but i'm trying to stick to it and so one of the things i'm doing now
00:23:12
to reduce my calorie intake and trying to get back to being nutritionally complete and all i eat is i'm having the
00:23:19
heel protein shake thank you for making a product that i actually like the salted caramel is my favorite i've got the banana one here which is the one my
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girlfriend likes but for me salted caramel is the one when you are asked about your
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creative process i i was looking through the huge wealth of traveling that you've done brazil
00:23:38
india um spent time in london and various parts of the world um how formative is travel and going to these different cultures and understanding the way they do things to what the art you
00:23:49
ultimately created because when i think about creativity from a marketing standpoint i see it as like pulling together lots of little pieces to form
00:23:54
something new and you you have because of your obsession with the vinyls and the musics and the samples you seem to have this like huge wealth of like
00:24:00
artistic reference points yeah to create new stuff from i'm just obsessed with the conversation that's like happening
00:24:06
all over the world like you know whether i go to brazil or are you london's a good example where you have this like
00:24:11
pan-african jamaican caribbean and then like you know european thing happening that's
00:24:17
like drone based that's like funky that's like um now it's drill like there's all these genres that if you look look into it why
00:24:23
it exists you can literally pinpoint the first creators and like where they come from and like why is it like why do they make this kind of sound so i
00:24:29
was always like putting together the equations like why are these things happening and brazil's my favorite place
00:24:35
to to talk about because i was hearing this music it was called funk karaoke for a long time those girls
00:24:42
that were doing a party in philly and i remember they gave me a mixtape and it was this like sound that was a mix of
00:24:47
miami bass and samba and like heavy metal because they're screaming songs there's bass beats but they're using
00:24:52
like these tamborzino like drums yeah so i was like what the is this i like literally couldn't find any information on this music so i went to i went to i went to brazil
00:25:04
and i actually had a magazine fund this trip it was it was an article for fader magazine and i went down there i met the big djs and i just became immersed in
00:25:11
that scene you know producing with some of those guys learning to produce with them and um [Music]
00:25:16
moving that sound forward a little bit i think my first real real production was with mia it was called bucky dungun and
00:25:22
it was a it was a funk record that we did and remember we actually went back to brazil and played it at this huge
00:25:27
festival it was like a massive hit in brazil and actually helped i think maybe validate some of the funk music in
00:25:34
brazil because before that it was like a rio thing and it became like a all over the country they were starting and now if you go to brazil like funk
00:25:40
music is the most commercial thing back then 20 years ago it was like a pretty underground genre and um
00:25:46
but yeah everywhere i go i'm like i want to learn more once i learned like all the catalog all the old producers from
00:25:52
you know jazz funk and soul and hip hop then i'm like the rest of the world is there's like endless
00:25:58
possibilities of where music comes from and what's going on so i started like venturing out there in terms of your crazy process as well
00:26:04
you in two different interviews i saw you talk about creating music that lasts a lifetime like really timeless pieces of
00:26:10
art and the question that i had when i saw you say that was like how do you do that how do you how can you even
00:26:15
anticipate that a music a piece of music is going to be timeless is there something in the design of it or the inspiration or the story there's a
00:26:21
there's a few times in the studio and i'm like a song i might be working on gives me goosebumps you know that that happens um
00:26:27
it was like when i did the we did justin bieber's wear you now like something like that like just was like well what the hell are we doing
00:26:32
and then like lean on from major laser that was a record that i've probably spent one year on the production you know
00:26:39
because i did so many different videos like no this isn't right now this isn't what's happening right now this is i need to do something as a producer my
00:26:45
job is to predict the future like when i release this record after i make it it's going to take like three months to actually get
00:26:50
to the people you know because it's like you need to go with labels clearing the record it can't just be like back then
00:26:55
they would make a edit and dj it and it was like hitting people right up but my little local neighborhood but a producer's job is literally like try to
00:27:01
like at least mine my forte's always been like how can i do something that's going to be big in like six months or like a year
00:27:08
like kind of like being futuristic sounding because that's what the big that's what the greats have always done you know prince or timberland or
00:27:14
pharrell they've always made records that trendset because they were so futuristic so my goal has always been to
00:27:19
follow them never to follow a trend um and those two records were ones that we did and we're like yes this is going to work even though it's crazy or
00:27:26
even palm the floor i remember listening that and driving around in the car um that was the song i did for major laser
00:27:32
and we're driving around la and looking at the guy who produced me named switch and we were just like this is is this gonna work it was so
00:27:37
crazy like we were just like this is so wild and then and then yeah like four years later beyonce sampled that record and it
00:27:43
became a massive hit so there was like my career has always had these little moments where we do things and then they
00:27:48
the ramifications happen later you know you feel the effects you know the seeds like you said um
00:27:54
but yeah having classics is important i think a couple times you know when you're on you're in it and you're like okay this is this is worth the time this
00:28:01
is worth the effort because learning songwriting with some of the great guys like um
00:28:06
you know dr luke saw my publishing in the beginning and having been in the studio with him and circuit and a lot of his writers i was like man you've spent
00:28:12
three days on like a second verse like this is what you do now that's what pop music is like you literally like if you think a record is
00:28:17
the big record you it's it's so painstakingly like like the effort is so concise like how to
00:28:24
make this the best record ever like everything is like a perfect addition like an architect like
00:28:29
every little corner of the house has got to be perfect right so i learned that process which i don't do very often but when a record is big i follow through
00:28:36
and otherwise just do a ton of records one of them is going to be good too that's another process you can do which also i
00:28:42
can do that too like just put you know randomly i put records out and record like on my mind which is another house records on my
00:28:48
album that was a huge tick tock record which would never you would never guess like you can't even guess when those records
00:28:53
happen yeah so because you can't guess when one's going to be a winner and maybe one's not going to catch on
00:28:59
as a creative do you kind of try and not harm your piece by trying to predict too
00:29:05
much what the outcome's going to be do you just focus on the process itself and like how much can you can you predict if
00:29:11
something's going to be a i mean there's a lot of like in this like we're talking about being in the studio so like i said there's a process like to making a great
00:29:18
record but there's also like diplomacy when you're in this when you're a producer like you have to know the artists like you know
00:29:23
ed sheeran you have an extra record we can try to work on and then he gives you songwriting and that's how like a record like cold water happened was another uh
00:29:30
bieber song i did and then you're like okay how do can we ask bieber's manager can he maybe do
00:29:35
this record we'll do a trade for production okay then that deals in the place then okay who can play the guitar on this oh you find that person so
00:29:42
sometimes it's literally like being like a an ambassador like talking all these people try to put a record
00:29:47
together too like that's another process that i had to learn and that's something else like when a record's already done like you take a song and you dress up
00:29:52
the production you still have to find the like all the keys to make that record work
00:29:58
um so it's like every record is a different journey you know and now with dance music i'm literally just in the studio
00:30:04
hearing records and trying to figure out what sound i want to make for a live effect and then i apply that in the
00:30:10
studio but um i've literally probably every kind of songwriting you can do i've i've done it you know from like sitting with
00:30:16
acoustic guitar with madonna to you know recording sound field recordings in a favela or uh
00:30:23
you know paying for a studio session for a regular artist with like my last little
00:30:28
bit of money in philly like it's at uh at um you know the root studio and like barely
00:30:34
getting a hook and then it was not even good enough to making something out of that later you know like it's always like it could be collections of vocals
00:30:41
or sample packs everything i've done you know i've tried it you know what's the cost of all of this in terms of on your
00:30:47
maybe cost is a bit of a presumption but what's the the sacrifice or the cost in terms of like personal life balance
00:30:53
because i think you're obsessed you're obsessed with no i think i i wasn't i was probably running at like 200 miles an hour until cove it happened i don't
00:30:59
think i would ever take a break and that was probably the best thing that happened like when i got one coveted when the lockdown happened and i
00:31:05
couldn't do shows like let me actually buy a house and let me actually like you know like
00:31:10
figure out what's my next steps in life i kind of needed that break so i was just going to do everything was breakneck speed you know it was like the
00:31:17
grammys this weekend oh you have a session with this person speaking about we gotta get back on this i gotta go to jamaica and do this it's like everything
00:31:22
was happening i never said no to anybody i was like this is crazy i was like you know a musician has the same life as
00:31:29
i have as an athlete you have like a peak you know if you're a linebacker in nfl football
00:31:34
your career is like maybe three or four years because you're getting beat up a quarterback can play for you know tilly's 44. um
00:31:41
a producer or artist like they're just hot for as long as they're hot and then they have to find that they have to come down
00:31:47
some of them can just continue to always go there like you know you have like people that are just always going to be in your mind like madonna or
00:31:54
you know um some of the big pop stars like taylor swift every record is going to perform but a lot of times you like on borrow
00:32:00
time you don't know when you're when you're when your window's going to close so for me i was like i got to keep going keep going and i never i feel like i
00:32:06
never had hit my my peaks i was like let's keep pushing it forward and eventually i was like you know what this
00:32:12
isn't that important like let me like actually enjoy my life i have three kids now i want to like do things i want to want
00:32:18
to you know explore more but not think about the work i want to do things that maybe benefit
00:32:24
my my mind and i think that's kind of what the the last two years of downtime has given me even though i did produce a lot
00:32:30
of records in between it was on my own terms you know i wasn't like chasing all the live events and i wasn't chasing all
00:32:36
the different uh successes i could have had um covered was very much the same experience for me it's actually why i
00:32:41
resigned from my company because i i actually got to look at my life it was like when when i stopped flying
00:32:47
eight times a month um i got to look at my life and um i also got to feel what it was like to slow down and talk to my
00:32:55
friends my family a little bit when you think about your pre-covered life um now you've got the hind the benefit of
00:33:00
hindsight and you've had time to pause um were you happy in that phase of your life
00:33:06
i was because it's weird i mean i was losing touch with thing other people i felt that so i was like very insular but my life i run the best like when it's chaos when
00:33:18
i'm doing 300 shows a year and i'm like getting up and doing the emails and going to the gym and then i'm like this is like i just i just work under
00:33:24
pressure i don't know what it is it's like my my like my best forte is is to have
00:33:29
just chaotic stuff happening all the time and i'm like somehow i can get through it so i was into that and i was
00:33:34
like this is a very unhealthy way to live um so now it feels like i'm back on a promo
00:33:40
tour and it feels like i'm back on this like fast track a fast track and i'm like i kind of want cove a little bit but then
00:33:47
you know it's all part of the process because you put a record out it's important for people to hear it you know you only have one chance for records to
00:33:52
be released and it's like you should give that if you have a great song you should give it every opportunity it has to reach people because that's it's it's
00:33:59
one shot you know um but don't waste your time on every song like you have a good song i got this one the song miguel that we're
00:34:04
promoting i'm like this song's worth the work you know other songs may be like i'll put them out and maybe something
00:34:09
will happen you don't never know maybe it's in three months there'll be like a dancing to it on tick tock or something and like it'll
00:34:16
be it's a crazy experience or something and it goes viral you never know what's gonna happen it's like just rolling the dice every time but every once while
00:34:22
there are some steps you can take to ensure a record has its best chance at surviving you know
00:34:28
and that's like what you're doing now right like the promo yeah putting effort behind it um just so then so so covert
00:34:33
happens your world kind of grinds to how everybody's does and you probably find yourself in a house somewhere
00:34:39
alone yeah how's that then in terms of mental health and dealing with the sudden stop i i think
00:34:46
uh i mean the the thing that sucked the worst about code is to have these children and like it was a time i
00:34:52
was like man i can do whatever i want but there's nothing to do like you couldn't go to l.a we closed the parks for so long because there was
00:34:58
no school like you know there's no birthday parties you can't go see other kids like it was just kind of like it's almost like a a waste opportunity i had
00:35:05
like a whole year to do my kids i was like what do we even find time to do it's like i buy a house with basketball courts in the house just play basketball
00:35:10
like it was like literally i made an environment for them to enjoy life but um i think
00:35:18
honestly i've been doing this for so long and i've made a really great team around me like i have these great women that like are like that always work with
00:35:24
me and like work for me and i think it just feels like it's a big family like now you know like people like it's a team whether it's like on my
00:35:30
management side or just like my personal side it's like i have people that are always looking in my best interests and
00:35:36
i think i got lucky i was i've been doing that since day one like my first manager worked for me for free for the first
00:35:42
year because he just like believed in what i did i was like i don't need a manager i was making so much money before i pay taxes like just selling
00:35:47
mixtapes and djing like i was like i bought i bought a property in philadelphia like in my first year of
00:35:53
like learning how to hustle the system of being a dj and then i was like damn but there's he was like there's there's
00:35:59
more to be done though like he's like there's more you can do than just living in philly and like buying being the biggest dj here and i think he gave me
00:36:05
that that motivation to like be bigger and from him you know another management group happened and then i've had a lucky
00:36:11
journey i've been the same with the same team for you know 20 years a lot of people don't get that i also
00:36:16
think i was very visionary in what i want to do so if you're like a young person like you get sucked up by management or whatever they might have a
00:36:22
vision for you or they might not or they might not have the right vision for you or they might not give you the room to
00:36:27
be yourself then you're going to switch like 40 managers and you might not ever find you know the success you need so it's
00:36:33
important to find people you know that really believe in you but also let you be yourself because you got to find
00:36:40
that because you're going to be that's all you got at the end of the day you can lose a million managers and a million people but you can always start
00:36:45
over and just be you reminded me of the avicii documentary that i saw which was a real pivotal moment in my life because
00:36:52
um yeah so i spent four weeks at home in 2019 and i was very much being dragged around we had a thousand employees so i
00:36:57
was being dragged around the place and that documentary taught me the importance of saying no to stuff 100
00:37:03
like i beat you i feel like i never his he was probably like one of my biggest influences even though it's younger than me i remember hanging out with a couple
00:37:09
times i was just like man this guy this guy's a genius but like he doesn't feel like he's he's in his own skin you
00:37:15
know because i don't think he ever had that chance to be who he be be what he wanted to be he was like
00:37:20
he was almost like a became like a machine because his success happened so quick um but that happens a lot that's like
00:37:27
the one story to the dj world but in the pop world happens like way too much i think are you good at saying your stuff no i
00:37:34
say yes everything but i'm also like i have really thick skin i feel like my personality is enormous i can also like
00:37:40
i can i can find my way through things i always say yes and then i'll say no for the next time if it sucks but yeah i've
00:37:45
done everything you know and i'm like uh you know this isn't the right thing i move on or even if it's a studio session i might go
00:37:52
get breakfast and i might never come back you know whatever it is i'll give everything a chance you know but uh i know
00:37:58
i know now some things you know my management knows me now to where they something don't even get to me the questions aren't even
00:38:04
going to come because they know it's like a no or they know i'll say yes it was a bad it'll be a bad yes thick skin yeah you started talking a
00:38:10
lot about mental health over the last couple years your partnership with calm as well i was reading about um
00:38:16
mental health in the djing world but mental health amongst men anyway what's your journey been with your own mental health
00:38:21
i think you know just being put as like a you know whatever celebrity or whatever it is
00:38:28
being attention always on you is you're gonna have so many critics and you're gonna have so many you know the
00:38:33
love is cool but nobody really cares about like all the adoration you get you care about the people that don't like you and that you get caught up in that
00:38:40
even if it's only like five percent but they really want to be vocal about they don't like you or they don't love you uh that bothers you no
00:38:47
matter who who you are you know eventually i had to just like wow these people suck like just whatever you're gonna it's you're never gonna get away
00:38:52
from those the people that like want to always be critics you know they just want to get a rise out of you i
00:38:58
think eventually you just got to say it the people that around me their opinions what matters like the people that i trust and you can't like kind of sit in the opinion of people that don't
00:39:10
either don't know you or maybe build an opinion about you from you know whatever it is because when it
00:39:16
comes to social media it's like a game you know it's not like you it's it's look i was talking about
00:39:21
conor mcgregor earlier today i'm like he's like the biggest heel his most paid athlete last year even though he didn't fight because he's like people love to
00:39:27
hate him you know so he built a brand out of just being that person um but you got to take it with you got to take the good and the bad with it i mean if you if you want to be in this business which is like i guess show
00:39:37
business like you said the comedians the dj's i'm like kind of like a popular dj i'm more like a like a people i go to my
00:39:43
shows and i even know my music because they know my brand and that kind of sucks because you don't you don't know if they don't know who they're gonna get
00:39:50
but um because i'm on that pedestal you're just gonna get eyes on you for everything so i feel
00:39:56
like you just have to if you want if you want the success if you want to be at this level you got to like just take it and
00:40:01
if i didn't want it i would just back up you know but i can take it so i feel like it's something i had to learn to grow into myself and just be like okay
00:40:08
be comfortable because what really matters is my team you know who my family thinks about me what my team thinks about me and i think that's
00:40:15
those people give you that motivation to go every day have you made a conscious effort to like shorten
00:40:20
that circle by like logging off i read somewhere that someone else has your twitter password now and you don't really have it and have you made a
00:40:26
conscious sense yeah i've been on twitter in like five years but i think um yeah it kind of sucks i hit or miss
00:40:32
because i mean even tic talk i was like slow to do that but then like i said if you want your if you want your
00:40:37
your brand to exist it's got to be there like because that's like you know there's more eyeballs on tick tock than they're on youtube nowadays so you
00:40:43
really you have to be part of that conversation with the audience um it took me a while like how to find people that actually could help me run that because i couldn't do it myself and i couldn't be
00:40:54
you know in every day long like videotaping and doing dances or whatever so how to find different ways to make
00:40:59
those things work for myself um it wasn't easy in the beginning but uh yeah i don't stay on i don't stay
00:41:05
on social too much but then of course during this album cycle i'm on there and i'm like having to always participate but
00:41:12
you know luckily i think i've got great fans i've got great people get great response to my album it wasn't that difficult but
00:41:18
every once in a while you have to get you take your mind off it because you can get caught up you know well what made you start talking about
00:41:24
mental health and being a bit of an advocate for that you said that a lot of people should speak about it a lot more why did that inspiration probably after the avicii
00:41:31
situation and then you know i work with a lot of rappers i think i had i had a hip-hop album that came out like two
00:41:36
years ago three years ago maybe four years ago it's called california and i had a little zan and i had a little peep on it and i had um trippy red and i had
00:41:43
i was working with xxxtentation i just remember i did this whole circuit working all these young rappers they were like
00:41:49
really young they were like 19 20 and the studio sessions were so weird and crazy and then
00:41:55
start these these rappers all started to die like they all started like you know little peep overdosed on um opiates and
00:42:02
you know x was was shot but he also had such a crazy vision on life and experiences and his he was like went through so much and i saw i saw what was happening to these
00:42:13
young guys because they were getting so popular so quick and i was really i just i just like damn these guys all need like a big brother so i think just with those guys a lot of them i was helping them out making
00:42:24
decisions but just seeing how crazy it is to be a 20 year old right now is is much more
00:42:31
difficult than when i was there you know when i was there you literally had your group of friends and that's all you knew the people on your street now
00:42:37
everybody knows who you are or can know you who you are or have have some kind of opinion about you and
00:42:42
i think you have to find ways to like i said earlier block that out and just concentrate on like being the best
00:42:48
you which sounds like a cliche but you really have to compete with just yourself every day not everybody else
00:42:53
one of the things i saw in that vichy doc as well was he was suffering with pretty severe anxiety i remember the
00:42:58
scenes of him being in that hotel room and his manager saying we've got to go and him saying i i'm not going yeah have you ever felt that anxiety have you ever
00:43:05
felt that that kind of crippling no i think you know i've i deal like people like close my
00:43:12
life have anxiety and they have a tax law and i have to talk them down sometimes um so i know
00:43:18
how how it feels and that's just like in the day-to-day life me i feel like i still like the stage
00:43:23
i've never been and i've also like i said i've also made a a a concerted effort to make the team like make me
00:43:29
comfortable you know that much documentary i'm not going to talk about like the people on team but like they just like
00:43:34
they just didn't care like no one cared about him or what he was feeling i remember being at shows i was like he played before in vegas and he would be
00:43:40
just missing he would play like two hours later and he would have to get up to get on stage because he just couldn't do
00:43:46
it he couldn't be up there it couldn't be on a pedestal and i feel like i could feel that way sometimes like on this tour you know just jet lag alone you're
00:43:52
like like nodding out at dinner and you're like i gotta go be excited for this crowd
00:43:57
and um i'm really good at like making that work for myself now so these people oh you know
00:44:02
i owe them this experience but yes i take a lot more time for myself now like i'm like i don't this i don't need
00:44:09
to do these anymore i'm telling them like this is this is over for me this is like something i would do three years ago it's important to to take that
00:44:15
that away that will out of the equation i'll feel a lot better but yeah you got to make those personal choices and you got to like i said people that are that are
00:44:22
hungry like me and you that just that when they get on the train they're just like going full throttle you do need something to say like okay it's it's
00:44:28
okay to like not go 100 miles an hour all the time you can like go like at a strolling pace or something and i guess
00:44:33
for you from what i read a lot of that was your kids as well right yeah when you when when your first child was born you talked about that being a really
00:44:39
pivotal moment it taught you that type the value of time and i think my first kid when i had my first son lock it i
00:44:44
just i was like i went i actually went faster so i was like i did i was like also as a
00:44:51
father your kids i was like did i found a connection with my sons when i was they were like five and four
00:44:57
years old when they were like because really the mother's like everything they're not leaving her sight they're not around they're not they don't really
00:45:03
give a about like their fathers i felt like that in the beginning of my son but so i was like i got a kid now my
00:45:09
life's about to get really complicated and i i think all my my best work happened around them because you said time management was like okay
00:45:14
i have like saturday sunday or have like wednesday off i'm gonna go to the studio for 16 hours every other day because i don't want to do anything else this is
00:45:20
the time i have like those five years i did all of my biggest records and my next time was born and my time
00:45:26
got even crazier and then um [Music] he just kind of like like i said you got to manage time better each time like you
00:45:32
gotta gotta figure out how to make it work i'm still figuring it out you know now
00:45:37
my boys are entering like the teenagers like they're 11 7. so they're asking me questions now that
00:45:43
they never would before like i'm like having to give them like you know boy man advice which i was like
00:45:49
this is cool they're having conversations that i can relate to them as much as they can relate to me before it was like we just
00:45:54
baby shark and legos and stuff when you um talking about your three boys when you you did this
00:46:01
really sweet post um giving a bit of a shout out to their mothers and in that sentence you said i'm still a work in
00:46:07
progress and i was really intrigued by that why did you say i'm still a work in progress as it relates to a post about
00:46:14
the mothers and your boys i think because you know my my boys i want them to to i want them
00:46:20
like i want to instill in the same discipline that my father has given me you know which i don't know how to do that like i don't think my father knew
00:46:26
either like he had i remember going to my father's rooms and he would have like books about like being the best dad you know like i
00:46:32
remember like i was like well i was like and i think that about till i was later i'm like damn maybe i should check that book out you
00:46:37
know like i'm like i was seeing silly when i was younger but i think being the person i am i'm
00:46:42
also like this like like i said my personality is so big that i feel like i'm kind of alpha even for my children
00:46:47
like i'm like when i when i'm off break i'm like let's go snowboarding let's go to the basketball court and they're just like dad
00:46:53
relax like we want to watch tv or something you know i'm like and i'm like why don't they want to do all this stuff with me like i'm like they think i'm
00:46:59
like the crazy person that comes over and like takes them away to do crazy stuff all the time and it's like
00:47:04
it's a big distraction in their life a lot of times so i've got to figure out how to like be with them you know more than just be
00:47:10
there in saying sports dad i gotta like be their their their friend too so that's like what i'm talking about things like that when you you know just even like sitting with my
00:47:20
son my seven-year-old and like watching cartoons or watching him play minecraft on his ipad is so much more important
00:47:26
than him if i do that for an hour then like take him on like a trip to nepal or something which i've done you know like it's like they're like they remember
00:47:32
that but they actually remember this time and on the couch with me a lot more i feel like quick one as you might know crafted are
00:47:39
one of the sponsors of this podcast and crafted are a jewelry brand and they make really meaningful pieces of jewelry
00:47:46
and this piece by crafted when i put it on for me it represents courage it represents ambition it represents being
00:47:53
calm and loving and respectful and nurturing while also being the antithesis of that seemingly the
00:47:59
antithesis of that which is sometimes a little bit aggressive with my goals and determined and courageous
00:48:05
and brave the really wonderful thing about crafty jewelry is it's super affordable it looks amazing the pieces
00:48:11
hold tremendous meaning and they are really well made the other thing that we were talking about just then is this um just came to mind is when i had olympians on this podcast they talked to
00:48:21
me about this thing called gold medal depression and israelita sanjay came here the ufc champion um two weeks ago
00:48:26
and he said that the worst day of his life was the day after he won the belt yeah he said he went straight into therapy and i i saw a similar tone and a similar narrative and when you spoke
00:48:37
about in fact some of the worst days are the day after the high yeah and then you you actually said that you
00:48:44
have to kind of suppress the high 100 to avoid the low yeah always so i feel like it gets addicting
00:48:51
because i mean like israel healing he has like what like two big fights a year like i'm like doing like which is i'm
00:48:56
not knocking him because these are amazing but um i have to do like 250 like shows you
00:49:02
know like sometimes and every night might be bigger some nights might be lame you got to just take it straight every
00:49:07
once i'm like damn that was awesome and i'm like appreciate the like you have to have gratitude for that but i mean if it's going to be your
00:49:13
lifestyle every night people are always like you don't drink when you're dj i'm like i'm djing like 200 nights a year i can't be
00:49:19
drunk i'll be dead like it's like it's like i don't know it's like not even why even asking that question it's like this is still a job for me i found ways to like
00:49:27
have energy and like have this feeling and like it's like it's actually i think it's mental work to do that
00:49:32
but you always if you're just going to be like in these peaks and valleys all the time that's not healthy and i see a lot of people
00:49:38
that are other creators and it's crazy but like the best creators are really like have bipolar tendencies
00:49:44
i've noticed that like some of my my favorite people i collaborate with i've noticed they have and some of them aren't addressing it
00:49:49
and it's like it leads to their six their failures in some parts i always see like i think my
00:49:56
the most creative people like have are always dealing with that you know either whether it was bowie or uh other djs
00:50:02
like i see that a lot and my peers and i think it's important to because they love that high too they're chasing that hive like that experience you know it's just like a drug like having like
00:50:12
fans you know scream being at a festival but eventually you just kind of like drown out the noise and just figure out
00:50:18
just make it more of a job because you can't just live like every night's like the biggest party of
00:50:24
your life you know because then it will be there's going to be a big downer and you've changed yourself you said you trained yourself to be like present and
00:50:30
energetic without letting the adrenaline fill your body and then staying up till 7am oh so yeah it's so hard it's hard to
00:50:36
sleep you know like when you do a show like i'm leaving vegas i'm doing like the great party we like do one to three
00:50:42
a.m and i'm like have a little vibe after the show and then it's like damn i gotta go back so i gotta be up at nine to take my kids i'm like
00:50:48
how do you like wind down because that's really hard to do too i had the tiniest dose of this we took this podcast we
00:50:54
made it a musical and we did three nights at the palladium and then so i i started going to sleep at 7 00 am
00:50:59
so i'd come off stage at the play maybe midnight come back here and i'd sit here at the table just like it's impossible that's why i'm touching this coffee yeah
00:51:06
i'm so you have to literally i think you have to take in strides you know because it's always going to be i think i think deep down inside of me if i like
00:51:18
lose all of the if i label drop me i couldn't make music anymore i'm not djing i don't
00:51:23
really you know like i've i flopped so hard i feel like i can start over again that's like something i feel inside me
00:51:28
okay maybe i would be like i love furniture maybe i'll be a carpenter whatever it is that's the thing i'm saying i just feel like i feel like or
00:51:34
pizza maker whatever it is i always feel like if you have that feeling inside you that you can lose everything and be okay with it that's
00:51:40
maybe that's the key to success then you know it's all this is just like a facade like it's really like i'll be
00:51:46
comfortable as long as i get to do something i love again it doesn't have to be huge don't be rich but i feel like
00:51:51
any moment if i got taken away i have my family i have my kids and i'm i'll gladly go and do something
00:51:58
with them and live a humble life i always feel like i'm that's some i'm ready for that you know and your new album this is what 20
00:52:05
years into your career now and it's your second full-length yeah album since like
00:52:10
florida yeah that's that's happened because uh once i started going to this studio in
00:52:17
l.a i was like this you don't make solo albums like florida you make albums for other people you know i'm just a dj i'm like a brand
00:52:23
this brand is limited to some a level but if i work on britney spears album well i can make this much money or i can
00:52:29
make a hit that streams like this or if i do this album and it wasn't until i think we did a major laser i was like okay well at least i can own this
00:52:35
project also and make the same size records and take all of it you know that became
00:52:40
kind of like just the business side of it i was like this is a lot better you know now and this i think finally dipped those to the point where like okay i have no other brands to put it in this is going to be my records now
00:52:52
kind of like that's kind of how this album happened because that's still it's a dance album but i worked on it as a songwriter you know because you
00:52:59
hear the songs they got verse chorus verse they're not straight techno records they're not straight
00:53:04
acid records they're just like they're kind of built like pop records 20 years in um
00:53:10
releasing this album what are you sick of in the process in the industry what are
00:53:15
you just like i hate this uh i think going through heathrows like the liquids come on like what is up with
00:53:21
that if i could not travel ever again that was i mean i literally had to spend like 30 minutes there yesterday because like
00:53:27
i was like they were looking for this one tiny eye cream that was in the bottom of a freaking i was like bro you can have
00:53:33
all this stuff just take it take it away from you but the travel is the worst you know i wish i could teleport to each show but
00:53:41
uh it's that's probably the worst thing if i could just not if i could just sit home
00:53:47
i also got a really nice house now in malibu so i'm like don't want to go on tour anymore i kind of want to sit there i love i love the when i was on twitch i
00:53:54
was djing it's cool i've been in europe in three years so it's you know it's actually feels brand new to me in this in this line of work
00:54:05
the whole audience changes like every three years too like kids that were ravers they go to clubs when they're 24 when they're 27
00:54:11
they got full-time jobs and their little cousins have been i've done like it's 20. i've done like seven of those
00:54:17
generations i feel like and they're still coming out and seeing me play so i've been really lucky based on the life you've lived when your three boys get to
00:54:23
you know 16 18 years old and they come to you and say dad i need advice on like what i should pursue how do i become successful what
00:54:30
is the general advice is there anything that stands out to you or is it just man i will take them on the road with me
00:54:35
i guess that's the only thing i can do it's the best that's the best advice i can give them like this is what i do every day just so you know you think i'm
00:54:41
like doing some crazy i actually have to wake up and go to the gym they have to go we're doing some press and promo they
00:54:47
have to get ready for the show we're gonna do dinner with a promoter as a nice favor and we're gonna go to the concert oh there's appearance afterwards
00:54:52
this is what i do and i go back in the morning i'm going to studio first thing in the morning just to show them what a tight what it takes like and this is
00:54:58
like you know 10 years in just let them know it's what the process is like that's the best i can do i can actually show them that
00:55:05
you know a lot of kids wouldn't have that wouldn't have their parents to give them something like that um
00:55:10
but yeah that's what i trained with george foreman junior he's a he's a boxing trainer and his father he said that he
00:55:16
didn't really understand anything about life till his father took him to the on the road to see him fight and took him
00:55:21
to like the gym sessions and how much work he did and i was in the middle of like george's like uh the griddle he was
00:55:26
doing the former grill era and um he said it just like something clicked inside of him they
00:55:31
changed him inside why the gym you've mentioned that twice is that because oh because i think i just i actually every day i have to go to the gym it's like
00:55:37
the one thing that i have to do to like make me feel like normal because i the jet lag for one but then i also traveling and then i think i need like an hour if it's yoga after something i
00:55:49
just need like to sweat for an hour every day to feel normal i don't know what it is but it's been like that for like the last
00:55:55
10 years it's not a very healthy lifestyle i mean i don't drink very often but this kovid got me into drinking again because it
00:56:01
was a little bit boring to go to eat dinner every night so i think i'm i'm trying to reset that a little bit
00:56:08
when someone's obsessive and they achieve success and they're flying 300 but they have 300 shows a year i can't
00:56:13
it's an inconceivable number in my mind um their relationships in terms of their
00:56:18
romantic relationships like how on earth does one maintain good romantic relationships when they're that obsessed
00:56:24
i've had i've been it's it's it's been hard i had a girlfriend during the covert
00:56:30
times and she was like great energy she understood my life really does understand your lifestyle
00:56:36
because it's it's so fast-paced also you're going to be it's about you it's like you're the
00:56:42
artist right it's like and when i was dating people that were in the music industry in the beginning i didn't understand at
00:56:48
all like that they're two different people one's the person that i know and then one's the artist you know because that's a
00:56:53
whole facade i go on the stream on stage you go see them do this it's not the person that you see in the bedroom at
00:56:58
the end of the night or whatever it's different i couldn't figure out i couldn't figure that out as a young person like and that's why i don't think it's
00:57:04
probably not that healthy to date someone else that's also in the music business because it's like really it's like smoking mirrors a lot between
00:57:10
what they're doing what they what their what their shows are like and who they are as a person and who
00:57:15
they are as a as like an artist is different do you value that do you value romantic connection is it a big i do
00:57:21
priority yeah i do i have i think you know i have two uh mothers of my children and like finding the balance with them has been like the hardest thing but it's like so great now it's like so peaceful like they
00:57:33
everybody's in like everybody loves each other and like my kids are all happy and the mothers are happy and um everybody's
00:57:40
healthy that was been the and then you know if i have a new girlfriend i brought her into the mix and they liked her too it was like so i've like found
00:57:47
this kind of harmony in it you know but um there's always turbulence you know having having a fight now like with school my son goes
00:57:53
to high school so i have to like navigate that problem there's like new problems all the time you know never you're never going to figure everything
00:57:59
out are you difficult to be in a relationship with i think no because i'm literally like
00:58:06
i'm down i'm just whatever i'm along for the ride i'm like whatever but then of course i have these kind of scorpio
00:58:12
tendencies i have like zero emotions so like it's hard to really is there any zero emotion yeah there's like nothing
00:58:17
you're gonna get nothing from me most time i feel like yeah so a lot of girls they but if you spend enough time with
00:58:22
me you know the real me but i think it's it takes a while you're going to get nothing from me most of the time in terms of emotions yeah i'm really
00:58:29
emotionless emotionlessness i feel like i don't i don't show a lot of emotion you know i'm kind of like
00:58:35
i can make this workout for my dad i'm just like like an army guy you know i'm like out here just like saving fate like poker
00:58:40
face i'm always like it's hard to get through my exterior um is that a good thing do you think for
00:58:47
like in terms of mental health it's just yeah i mean i found people that could deal with it you know probably not a
00:58:53
good thing no but it's been like that i think that's also the thing you have to put on to be like i said be in this world too like to
00:59:00
like it's definitely uh something to protect me but at the same time you know if you get the right person you you give her everything i sat here with patrice evra he's the
00:59:13
you're a football fan you're an arsenal fan right so patrice evra was the the famous manchester united left back and
00:59:18
he said something similar to me he said he grew up on the streets of france drug dealing he watched his brothers in his house die from drug overdoses in the in
00:59:24
the bathroom and then his head teacher at the time like sexually molested him so he put up this and to survive on the
00:59:31
streets of france at the time he put up this big kind of external outer wall tough skin as you might have called it
00:59:37
and that served him to becoming an elite athlete he served him to a point and then one day his girl turned to him on the sofa and said are you happy and he was like fight back yeah i'm happy yeah
00:59:48
but then she kept persisting right like angrily right that that defense and then she kept persisting and he just broke
00:59:54
down and he'd never told anybody what happened to him with his headmaster and he told her at like 35 years old and he
00:59:59
said to me while he was sat here that journey of like opening up and not being the tough guy anymore actually changed
01:00:05
his life it changed his relationship with his kids it meant that he finally talked about how he felt for the first time even though it made him feel
01:00:11
vulnerable and that's why i asked the question is it is it a good thing like to be you know i'm i think i'm i'm very
01:00:18
selfish because at the end of the day i'm never lonely on the road and i think it's because i've never fell in love with a girl like
01:00:24
i never felt like ah this is love because if really if it was love it's love like the love is like love like you i mean i had my heart broken maybe i was
01:00:30
in love a little bit but like i never felt like life changing love until my son was born and i was
01:00:36
like that the love i have with my my firstborn son and then my second my third is like the connection though i'm
01:00:41
like damn no matter what this kid stuck with me like this is like my life partner for real like this is like
01:00:46
somebody that i have to make this person a better human like that was something that when that happened it became
01:00:52
like my go-to like i'm always gonna this is the this is the person that i care the most about all three of these boys
01:00:58
it really that was the first time i understood love was when i had children you know maybe that sounds weird to you but just
01:01:04
feels like that's undeniable like no matter what they do i'm gonna love them like you know do you believe in love
01:01:11
romantically maybe not maybe i don't i don't have it i mean i'm still like playing the game like i'm
01:01:16
still you know like you know trying to find a great woman to settle down with our previous guests always write a question for the next guest and then funnily enough i never tell the guest who the previous
01:01:27
person was he wrote a question for you didn't know who he was writing it for he he wrote um why do you exist
01:01:34
maybe it is to joy and inspiration to people and maybe have you know in some in maybe new music and exploration into culture
01:01:49
i hope and then in like a more spiritual way it is to just add something to the world that wasn't there before because everything you create in the fabric of time and space is something that's brand new and
01:02:02
that's what we that's only what we add so the three answers amen thank you so much and thank you for for coming here
01:02:08
your new album diplo which me my girlfriend sat on this table a couple of days ago listening to it's remarkable that someone 20 years into their career
01:02:14
can create a project that feels so fresh and relevant and exciting at the same time i honestly i i played the record
01:02:22
for my girlfriend we're going through the records you guys do it podcast no no we we we did it here and i was like oh i was like
01:02:28
diplo's coming in and so i started playing the new records in the album and she's from france in portugal she lives in indonesia i know that one she says i
01:02:34
know that one oh because a lot of this is a razor yeah well yeah and it was and i i literally had to check the year in
01:02:39
which the album had dropped because they the the songs felt so familiar yeah and and that really took
01:02:46
me off guard but um i'll be honest we added a couple tracks already out yeah yeah yeah yeah from the view numbers i
01:02:51
think the streams go up first week a little bit but uh yeah but um there's there's they're part of the
01:02:57
project i mean i had i got really lucky here in the uk i had the song with paul wolford called looking for me that was like so big here i was so it was like my
01:03:04
probably my biggest solo record i've ever had in anywhere was that was like number one ireland it was number
01:03:09
two here but um i feel like the uk really if anything the dance culture they understand it like they get it it's been a while you guys have like real dance projects like you know chemical brothers chase of
01:03:20
status bicep uh disclosure you have like the idea of like dance projects which we don't have in america we just have like
01:03:26
a bunch of like scummy djs going out every night and playing in las vegas but we're trying to build it i think it's important but here
01:03:33
you guys have this culture it's amazing well thank you for blessing us with another project and it's legendary that it's so resonant 20 years into your
01:03:39
career yeah so it's really really inspiring thank you for being here thank you huge pleasure thank you [Music]
01:03:52
[Music] [Music] you