Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Action Bronson On Touring With Eminem, Best Pizza In NYC, & His Infamous Tiny Desk Concert
Episode Date: December 12, 2023Yerrrr! Flagrant had to get the NYC legend ACTION BRONSON the show. He spits facts about all of his passions: making fire music, being a foodie, women, cars, Albania and much much more. INDULGE 00:00... start 02:06 Action is a true artist 05:12 Pleasure from all his passions 06:53 The way Action describes flavour + food is art 09:25 Cooking to impress women + Extreme daggering is impressive 10:35 Grandma’s cooking + Albanians in NYC 13:45 Shutting down Albania with Dua Lipa 15:04 Running with the Albanian Boys 19:39 Hernia from NBA Jam + surgery in Alaska 21:47 Not messing with Michael Jordan + Oakley is cool though 23:31 Playing the fat positions in football 25:10 Getting a 100 on GED + stealing mother’s car at 14 27:08 Car antics - girl crashes into BK, stolen, knife being pulled on Action 30:22 Action only just got his driving license 32:56 Craziest thing Action seen on subway 33:34 What is left to do? Ocean exploring + training pools 38:40 Action wants to be shredded + Muscle Head Ed 40:50 Going to a Chica Chica house + $30 for a GREAT time 48:25 Japanese attention to detail + Jiro on sight + Yakuza flying kick 53:29 Gentlemanly fighting + never been KOed 55:22 Growing up on NYC Hip Hop + trying to make your boys laugh 57:20 People discovering Action’s music + Rap sucks now 1:00:10 Tiny Desk was a breath of fresh air + rap live is trash 1:06:51 Unorthodox shows + Action’s mythology + unorthodox giveaways 1:12:50 DMX’s real impact 1:17:04 Loving mixed martial arts 1:18:51 Building businesses + atrocious Uncut Gems auditions + Scorsese + Bono loved up Action 1:26:09 Learning to deal with insecurity + shame 1:30:06 Dream features for Action = Drake + Duo Lipa 1:31:38 Adam Silver knows how to DAP + flipping people off of passion 1:37:30 Vice - carte blanche + downfall + “F that’s delicious”’s impact + Bourdain’s legacy 1:43:34 Action tagging + graffiti culture 1:45:29 Hunts Point + HBO + public access + Black Israelites heat 1:53:41 Touring with Eminem, K. Dot + J. Cole 1:56:13 Chocolate Chip Cookies + milk’s essential role + picking the right restaurant 2:02:25 Ingredients should dictate the menu 2:06:30 We eating cookies + rating them 2:13:15 Best Pizza + best spots in New York 2:14:40 Thai food is insane + experiment with food
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I learned how to f*** by dancing reggae.
I just want to let you know, like,
if you weren't dancing reggae in a rec room in Queens,
you don't f*** good.
Then I got the Chevy Lumina.
Ooh!
Mint green.
And the wheel was like that permanently.
And then I crashed that within three days.
I tried to hit somebody in my building.
They do.
We'll get to that.
He was on it.
I was taking, like, Project steroids.
My boy Musclehead Ed was making the trek.
So he was shooting in your ass?
Yeah. He'll hurt you. He'll hurt your butt.
Where is Adam Silver from?
I don't know but I'll tell you this. He gives a real good hip-hop handshake.
Set the tone crazy like, what up?
Pshhh.
And we're gonna notch.
No way.
He said it to me with his eyes.
Chef Dove
Oh man
Did you warm them up?
This is fucking silly right here
Hold on
Do you want to know where each are from
Or do you want to kind of be a little surprised?
Let me do it blind
What's up everybody?
Hello and welcome
And today we are joined by
Okay, we have hip hop legends
We have food legends
Natural wine legend in the
making. Maybe an olive
oil legend one day. I think so. Damn, bro.
Damn, bro. There's a lot of stuff.
I'm not even a fucking... We got
Mr. Suede 56 in the building.
Oh, shit.
You know about my AOL.com
name? Come on.
A Suede 56.
You got mail. Rotten.com. Come on, man Sway 56? You got mail?
Rotten.com?
Come on, man.
What's good, man?
How you guys doing, man?
I'm good, man.
It's been too long, bro.
I hollered at your boy Clovis.
What'd he say?
I was just like, yo, man, we need a good natural wine for the pie.
We need something nice to sip on.
So he gave me two selections.
Maybe we go sip on it a little bit later.
You know what I mean?
But we had to go deep cut research, bro.
I mean, if you're hitting him up, I'm guaranteed it's going to be phenomenal.
Okay.
I guarantee.
I'm going to.
I can't guarantee other things about him.
Yeah.
But his selection of natural wine is fucking 100%.
What's the other shit you can't guarantee?
He's just, you know, he's one of those fucking Frenchmen.
He's just, you know, he's unpredictable.
He's unpredictable, but he's charming.
Yeah, he is. He's a beautiful guy.'s unpredictable, but he's charming. Yeah, he is.
He's a beautiful guy.
Bro, I'm stoked that you're here. I've been following your life for a while.
And there's one through line that I've loved with your professional career,
is it feels like from the outside, there's nothing that you will be motivated to do
that you don't love
that i really appreciate that that exudes me it exudes out of me that's the fucking exact thing
i can't i just don't have it in me i'm not like i've been through it for a minute now it's been
14 years since i started doing music and you learn quick that
when you're dealing with some certain
situations that you're not made for,
I'm not going to fucking,
I don't respond well to that type of thing.
Like what? Just like, you know,
being coaxed into trying to
do certain things certain ways.
It's not my thing. I have to fuck
up. I have to do it my way. I have to, you know,
figure it out. Trial and error. On my way. Yeah. It needs to be your way. It has to be. There's no my thing. I have to fuck up. I have to do it my way. I have to figure it out.
Trial and error.
Yeah. On my way.
Yeah.
It needs to be your way.
It has to be.
There's no other way.
Yeah.
I'm a fucking control freak.
Yes.
Agreed.
Right?
100%.
Yeah.
You have to be.
You got to have the vision.
You know what you want.
Exactly.
No one else knows what I want.
Well, this is the thing I think when some people don't understand this.
Some people just want success.
They don't care about the art or the passion.
So for them, they're like, well, tell me what to do to be successful.
Like, I'll do whatever you tell me as long as it leads me to success.
But if you're doing something because you're passionate about it, which I've seen with you, and I'll bring up an instant that made me think about it.
But it's like, if you're doing something you're passionate about, and then someone someone tells you to do in a different way, you're like, but that's not what
I want to do. And they're like, this will make you more money. And you're like, I don't think
you're understanding. Like I'm doing this because I love this. And then if people fuck with it,
that's a bonus. 100%. You have to go into it looking like that. Cause I'm not a fucking puppet.
Exactly. I'm the puppeteer.
I'm the puppet master.
I'm the one pulling the fucking string.
I'm making the guy do this and I know all the dances.
I'm doing that.
So what happened when they first tried to make you dance?
I don't think they ever tried to really make me dance because they knew I wasn't going to dance.
And that's why I became independent quite quickly.
and that's why I became independent quite quickly.
Yeah.
So, I mean, you know, for the most part,
everyone thinks that they know what they could do with you.
Yeah.
They try and pinpoint who you fucking are and what they think you would do.
Yeah.
But there's no pinpoint.
I have new aspirations and new things that I like daily.
Yeah, yeah.
Before I came here, I was just cooking.
Yeah, with Russ.
Yeah, exactly, with my man Russ. I created four brand-new dishes that I'm going. Yeah, yeah. Before I came here, I was just cooking. Yeah, with Russ. Yeah, exactly.
With my man Russ,
I created four brand new dishes
that I'm going to be serving
at a dinner
because that's my true passion.
Yeah.
I have many true passions.
This is it right now.
Yeah.
I'd like, you know,
I'm just turned 40.
I'm trying to get off
everything I need to get off.
Yeah, check off the bucket list.
What the fuck, man?
What am I doing here?
I'm not here to waste time.
I'm here to work.
I have too many things going in my mind,
too many things that I need to release
to make myself feel better.
That's really what it's about.
I was watching the,
everybody should go check out your tiny desk.
Your tiny desk was phenomenal.
Fantastic.
Thank you, bro.
Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
It's one of those things where it's like,
I've seen this with comedy.
Sometimes you see it with music.
Sometimes you see it when people are giving speeches,
like a really good order
can get people to fall into the vortex
when I was texting.
And then I was watching some of the
food videos and bro, you react
to food
the same way you
react to music.
Did you realize it?
You were like moaning a little bit.
You're like looking up at the air.
It's because it's all pleasure.
No matter what it is, it could be music,
art, this, that, a woman's touch,
whoever's touch,
if you feel that chicken
skin, that tingle, that's a real
fucking feeling.
Just talking about it, I'm
overcome.
Just talking about that shit.
Just talking about certain situations.
It's anything.
Watching someone
come back from a fight.
I cry at
weird sports stories.
You're so like...
It's the only thing that makes me cry.
Exactly. I'm sterilized
by watching death on Twitter.
I see it all day long. It don't know what it's like.
It looks like a fucking movie all the time, but it's real.
Unfortunately, that
doesn't make me cry.
A story about the fucking
guy coming back to the dog that hasn't
seen him in 20 years.
Dog jumps all over him.
Or the kid surprising the kid at the
Little League game.
That type of shit gets me. jumps all over him. Or the kid, surprising the kid at the Little League game. Oh.
You know, like,
that type of shit gets me.
Some of the show back from war.
That type of shit gets me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know?
That's a real victory story.
Hell yeah.
The way you taste food,
the things you say
when you're tasting coffee
and you say,
I taste purple.
When you have Chrissy's Pizza
and you say,
I taste,
this is summer.
Yeah.
Can you explain that to me?
Because I don't be tasting that.
Indian food too spicy.
These are things I understand.
I speak with Indian food with more passion than I don't know about anyone that I know.
It's like I just have a passion for flavor and zest and fire.
Yes.
Which all Indian food has.
And I think that I just, I have a lot of things.
I've lived a lot of life.
I haven't just been here for 40 years existing.
I've been fucking doing shit.
I'm in the streets.
I'm out.
I've been all kinds of places around this world on earth.
Whoever, elsewhere as well.
So I have a lot of comparisons to draw upon.
Colors, fucking this, that, anything you could think of.
Sometimes you see a color.
Sometimes you smell permanent marker.
Sometimes you see an 87-635 CSI, all white, dropped on Borbay rims.
It could be whatever.
And I could be talking about fish
or I could be talking about a marshmallow.
Is food art to you?
Because you'll talk about music the same way.
Food is art.
So it's called culinary arts.
You know, it's not just,
it's the art of making food presentably gorgeous and delicious.
But evoking emotion through the food.
It is.
It's theater.
There's this.
I've been taught.
You could go to restaurants.
You could go to watch a play.
You could go to Les Miserables.
Or you could go to, I don't know, like a beautiful restaurant and have the same sort of experience, the same theatrical.
Theater.
It's theater.
Everything is theater.
Yeah, it taps into some shit you've already felt.
There's a friend of ours.
Everything is theater.
Yeah, it taps into some shit you've already felt.
There's a friend of ours, his uncle's in the biz, and he would advise, I guess, or consult on a bunch of these restaurants.
And he'd try these desserts, and he's like, this is delicious, but it's not fall.
Yeah.
I'm like, what does that mean? And he goes, it doesn't evoke the feelings that you had in Thanksgiving when you were a kid.
For sure.
You got to bite in and then think
about your childhood. Like on some Ratatouille
shit. Yeah. If that's what you're going
for, I mean, you're not going to serve a
passion fruit tart in the dead of winter.
That doesn't evoke Caribbean
unless you're trying to take someone
away from where they are presently.
You want a vacation. You come here for it.
You want to put that vacation in your mouth.
And there it is.
What about women?
Was it like this with women?
I learned how to cook to try and coax a woman.
Really?
I mean, yeah.
You know, you want to be able to impress a shy guy.
A shy guy.
A shy guy.
Wait a minute.
A shy guy.
Who is this girl? I learned how to fuck by dancing reggae.
I just want to let you know,
if you weren't dancing reggae in the rec room in Queens,
you don't fuck good.
Really?
Like dagger and everything?
That's a fact.
There was no daggering at that.
It was just like lots of grinding and the butterfly.
The butterfly was a big move.
Who was the first guy to start the dagger?
That guy was brave or crazy.
Man, I've seen some extreme daggering off the roof of buildings.
All the tops.
It was like extreme daggering competitions.
From the turnbuckle.
Full-on spin-off to like 20 foot on top of a building.
Like, yo, somehow power slamming this woman, and they land, and they're still dancing.
They still dance.
They land, and they're still dancing. They landed. They're still dancing.
He's fucking crazy.
So what was the first meal that you cooked that girl?
Some bullshit ass
pasta dish.
Yeah, it was some trash, but it was alright.
But would your dad do this for your mom?
Where does this come from?
I don't know. I just learned from my grandparents.
My grandmother was the best cook
around. You know, the best Albanian.
When you're Albanian, you go to different people's houses and everyone gives you the food.
You weren't turning down my grandmother's food.
I would turn cigarettes and food down constantly when I was a child.
Now, anything.
Anything goes.
The Albanians in New York, were you really plugged in growing up?
What does that even mean?
Okay.
Is it true the Albanians took over?
No, no, no.
Not like that.
Not like that.
But when I was texting you, I was asking.
Do you remember, Al, you might be young for this, but there were these Albanian gangs?
No, I remember.
ABI.
There was the Albanian boys or something like that.
Do you remember?
It sounds original.
The Albanian boys?
Yeah.
I mean, listen, they were just learning English, you know?
I think this is like, this is like, this was uptown.
This is maybe like uptown and like Queens.
I know about the Queens ones, but I've heard about the Sons of Dorman and the Sons of...
Famiglia pizza owners.
Yeah, exactly.
Those guys, but the sons of doormen and the sons of the workers of the building, like
supers.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They would terrorize the east side and the west side of the city.
Yeah, yeah.
There's stories of all kinds of Albanian brothers and all kinds.
I mean, it's never a story like, man, this guy's a tremendous surgeon.
I mean, it's never a story like, man, this guy's a tremendous surgeon.
This Albanian guy.
Like, we know this Albanian guy, Shay.
He's fucking one of the top elbow surgeons on earth.
No, you never hear that bullshit.
Yeah, you guys were getting after it. It's fucked up.
Yeah, but Albanians, I'm like, do you speak Albanian?
A little bit.
A little bit.
I understand much more than I speak.
When I was younger, I did, but now there's really not many.
Nobody you speak to.
I don't want to talk to.
I speak Spanish.
Yeah, because of the restaurant.
Not only that, my wife's Colombian.
That's who I'm talking to all day long.
Yeah.
Any interest in learning Albanian?
I feel like I need to.
I'm embarrassed to tell you I don't speak it, honestly.
My Hindi's not good enough.
You just got to go there, I think.
I've been there fucking three, four times.
You have to stay there for an elongated period of time,
and you have to practice constantly.
It's one of the hardest dialects to learn because it's not directly correlated from anything.
Any language.
It's its own fucking language, literally.
Yeah.
I think a lot of people don't realize
how unique Albania is, even within the Balkans.
I mean, you know, my family's from Kosovo and from Skopje.
Yeah.
You know, so former Yugoslavia.
So you're ethnically Albanian in Kosovo.
Mm-hmm.
So Kosovo gets independence, but within Kosovo, most people are ethnically Albanian.
Yeah.
Even though it was part of Yugoslavia.
Ethnically Muslim Albanian.
Muslim Albanian. And Islam comes in with, Yugoslavia. Ethnically Muslim Albanian. Muslim Albanian.
And Islam comes in with like the Ottomans in that region.
You know what?
I'm not a fucking, I'm not a historian.
Yeah.
But I would imagine sometime around then.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, because it's.
When the goats came.
I heard when you went out there and did a show, it was kind of insane.
It was pandemonium. It was some like Waddy DeVos wedding shit.
It was pandemonium.
It was that many people smoking cigarettes.
Crazy or what?
It was pandemonium.
I mean, Dua Lipa brought me out there, for God's sakes.
It was her festival.
And we're both from there.
I was chilling with my uncles and my cousins.
My uncles and cousins were at the festival and they couldn't even fucking understand
what was happening.
Wait, what?
They didn't understand.
They really didn't get it.
So they just knew you as a relative but they didn't know it was like that?
They're such simple people. They couldn't...
No one could fathom what had happened.
No one understands.
It's really a fucking crazy story.
Was it like make you cry
type of shit? They cried.
I didn't fucking cry. Really? I've been through this shit
already. I know what's up.
I do it.
I cried before.
I'm done crying.
I cried all these tears out.
Yeah, I need to know what makes you cry, bro.
Dog videos.
Not being treated nicely.
You like that.
I like to be treated nicely.
I'm emotional.
Carl Thomas.
Where's Carl at?
Shouts to Carl Thomas, man.
So emotional.
I still wouldn't know if he was plugged up.
With?
With the Albanian boys.
Isn't that what plug?
You want to know if I ran guns in and out of the war?
Yeah.
Yep.
I was fucking 12 years old, but yes.
All right.
Did I sell rocket launchers?
Sure.
Tour announcements.
First of all, thank you guys so much
for gobbling up tickets to the live tour.
I just want to let you all know
we have added another show in Chicago.
We've added another show in Boston.
We have added another show in Philadelphia.
We have added two more shows in San Francisco.
Another show in St. Petersburg, Florida.
We added another show in Miami, baby.
Miami we have added.
Guys, we also have Houston,
Texas. We've added another show in
Dallas, Texas. We added Charlotte, North
Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia,
Nashville, Austin, Texas,
Phoenix, Arizona.
And yeah, thank you
guys so much. Those tickets are all available at
theandrewschultz.com.
Go to the website,
get them direct from the source.
Don't get ripped off by the scalpers.
I will see you all there at the Life Tour.
Thank y'all so much.
Peace.
All right, also guys,
sing tour dates.
First of all,
I'm coming to the UK this weekend.
Glasgow,
I'm pretty sure I said that right,
Glasgow.
I don't know exactly how to say it.
I hope that's close enough.
On the 17th,
London on the 18th, we added a show. Those tickets are almost sold out manchester on the 19th those
tickets will sell out for sure also january 6th 8th and 9th i'm gonna be out in europe again
oslo amsterdam and eindhoven january 18th through 20th dc improv those tickets are already almost
sold out which is crazy because i haven't even announced it on my socials just as pod so thank
you guys for buying tickets and then then January 26th and 27th,
I'm going to be in Salt Lake City, Wise Guys Comedy Club. And we're adding a bunch more dates
to go to akashsingh.com for all those tickets. I'm coming to you. See y'all soon.
I was talking to Chris Gotti, so Irv's brother. And he was saying early days of hip hop,, when you were on the road, not you, but when someone was on the road, there was basically one venue where you could do the show.
And that venue might have been owned by the local drug dealer or whatever.
The show was promoted by that.
By the time you're in the game, are you playing traditional venues like Live Nation, whatever?
Are you still doing the, hey, they're paying all cash.
It could be a little shady.
They try to undercut you.
Nah.
I started out doing shows.
I started off doing the good shows because I got with guys early on that they were doing this.
Yeah.
So I didn't get fucked around too much.
Who's that?
This guy, Dante Ross.
Okay.
He's like a legendary new york like
in the music biz type of guy but he was a road he was a road dude for the beastie boys he's just
been around forever yeah legendary like low-reside kid yeah and you know he didn't let any he didn't
let me get over by any of these weirdos yeah and that just followed suit i just learned never
get over by a weirdo.
The other guys will fuck you over like the
suits will fuck you over, but some weirdo, no.
Did you ever have the suits try to...
Of course. I've been sued.
They fucking do all kinds of crazy shit.
Is it like smile to your face?
That's always what it is. They don't even
talk about it. What do you mean?
You'll have an issue with somebody.
You'll see them.
There won't even be a conversation about that.
It'll be something else.
Lawyers talk.
You don't talk.
You can't talk to them about it.
How are you going to talk?
And then how do you handle?
You just got to remove yourself.
You either tuck your tail
and live to fucking fight another day,
or you get fucking blackballed.
Don't get me lying out here.
I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.
I'm making shit up.
Bro, I don't know.
Yo, let me tell you something.
I've had smooth, I've had somewhat smooth sailing.
I do fucking great shows, festivals.
I do good business
I'm known as a good business practitioner
But that's what I'm trying to understand
I come from a world
Of the culinary world
Where I'm a half hour early
You don't catch me doing bullshit
Like I do my thing
And I get the fuck out of there
I'm not trying to hang around
I don't want to take pictures with you
I'm not hanging around for the next act
I'm doing my thing
And I'm going back to either watch
some sort of mixed martial art,
get high, or just sit
there alone.
And just think.
Just think about shit. I don't have to
do anything. I can just sit there alone and think
about things. What do you think about Antarctica?
I like it. Have you been?
No, but I would go.
I would definitely go. I got asked to go next but I would go. I would definitely go.
I got asked to go next week.
And?
And I can't go.
But I've been, I'm like.
I've been to deep Alaska.
Oh?
Yeah.
Where?
In.
By the military base or whatever the shit is called.
You know, we did, we flew into, where is the fucking capital?
Anchorage.
Anchorage.
You fly into Anchorage and then we did this like nature thing
we took some fucking
went fly fishing
in the middle of
who the fuck knows where
do you know maybe
nah it was
it was like the Arctic Circle
where you had to fly
the water boat
and land
in the goddamn
valley
of ice
wow
and I got fucking sick
playing NBA Jam
and I had to fucking
get surgery out there,
so I didn't even get to do that.
You got surgery in the middle of Alaska?
Yo, they got the best goddamn surgeons out there.
They pay them so much.
Oh, really?
Because you get hurt out there, you know?
And nobody wants to go live there.
If you're a doctor, you're like, fuck this.
You're going to Palm Beach.
How did you get hurt playing NBA Jam?
That's what I'm trying to get at.
I had a hernia prior, and it just fucking seized up,
but it was because I was doing mad moves.
On NBA Jam.
You play like that, your whole body's into it.
Exactly.
And I fucking ended up having to get emergency surgery.
A hernia from NBA Jam is crazy.
It was a prior.
It's just a game day.
I was on fire in there.
Did you finish out the game, though?
Mm-hmm.
Okay, respect.
I won, of course.
Knicks versus Jazz. You know I fucking won. Who do you play with? What's, though? Mm-hmm. Okay, respect. I won, of course. Knicks versus Jazz.
You know I fucking won.
Who are you playing with?
What's your lineup?
I switch up.
I switch Ewing and Oakley.
Ewing, Starks, Oakley, Starks.
Who's your shooter?
You go Ewing, Oakley?
No, when you switch it up.
Oh.
Listen, certain plays, you know, there's certain teams you have to switch it up.
You don't always use fucking Starks, Ewing, or Starks, Oakley.
Right, right.
You know?
Depends on the matchup.
You never use Charles Smith.
No, I never. I can't believe
we used him.
Do you guys know the
Charles Smith Memorial underneath the rim?
R.I.P. What is that? I've never heard of it.
Fuck it, when he missed
47 layups in a row
in the playoffs.
This is a heartbreaking moment. I can't even believe
we're bringing this up right now.
It's all right.
Fuck it.
Let's move on.
Are you really anti-Jordan still?
Is that real?
I don't fuck with Jordan at all.
Yeah.
Why is this?
I don't.
First of all, I'm a New York guy, Knicks fan.
Fucking I hate Michael Jordan sneakers because it's like, for me, it's like, I don't know.
It's like the type of uniform.
It's like you're a fucking, I don't know, it's like the type of uniform, it's like you're a fucking,
I don't even know, it's a robot.
And he was a fucking asshole when I met him.
What'd he say?
No, he just gave you a fucking weird handshake,
like a walk-by handshake.
It was whatever.
Yeah.
I was with Oakley.
I was like, yo, fucking, oh, fuck this guy.
Oakley had on the gecko belt.
You know about Oakley's studded gecko belt?
No, what is this? Legendary, man.
He wears
a lot of wide leg pants.
So he likes to wear the studded belts.
And he has a gecko like that.
That's a fucking sick one.
What's Oakley like?
He's cool. He's chill.
He cooks. Really? He had a. He's chill. He cooks.
Really?
He had a cooking show.
Okay.
Really?
Yeah.
Good cook?
Huh?
Good cook?
There you go.
Moderate.
You better watch out. And I feel like that's you being nice, if I'm being honest.
I love Oakley.
That's one of my guys.
You didn't say you love his food, though.
I don't know.
I've never tasted it, to be honest.
You saw it from eyes.
I did the eye test.
You know, whether you think that's going to be good, you know, so I don't know.
This tastes like winter.
Yeah, this tastes like a rubber shoe.
It's all right.
He don't need to be a good cook.
He was a good rebounder and shooter from the top of the key.
Yeah.
But right on the side of the key.
That baseline. 12-footer
on the baseline. We're good. That's where I'm good
from. My short game
and my in-between game is
unmatched.
I'm a real ball. It's the
first game you play. I mean, here in New York,
of course, but I thought you were like a football
guy. I do it all. How do you play football
growing up in the city? That's another, like your school had a...
Bayside High School. Oh, you went to like a real...
I went to Bayside High School, yeah.
Well, it wasn't really a big high school, it was just one of those high schools
that had the team, like...
I could have went to Jamaica High School, but they don't have
no football team. Forest Hills High School
didn't have a football team.
I played baseball at Bayside,
played football also. What did you play in football?
Center and nose guard.
So literally both fat positions.
Fat guy here, fat guy here.
I played both of those.
Center's the smartest position, though, they say.
You know, come on.
What are we talking here?
They used to always bust our ass.
I played for Channel.
You played for the...
I played you.
Yeah, I used to bust our ass every time.
That's what I'm saying.
You played for Beach Channel.
Then we played. How old are you? 34. A little younger. Oh, I used to bust our ass every time. That's what I'm saying. You played for Beach Channel that we played.
How old are you?
34.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Definitely.
But I played Beach Channel, and it was like fucking crack needles.
You can't even do crack with a needle.
But somehow there was crack needles on it.
It wasn't the players shooting up.
It was the cheerleaders.
It was the cheerleaders.
But there were divots out of the ground, bro.
It was one of the fucking worst fields to play at, Beach Channel.
Shouts to fucking Beach Channel, Rockaway Queens.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
See?
Respect.
They were on our schedule every year, Beach Channel.
But that was an easy dub or what?
Yeah.
When we were playing, yeah, it was.
When we were playing, it wasn't their fault.
I only did a couple years at Beach Channel.
That's true. Then he had to
Then he was out
I got the hell out of there
Quick also
Oh really?
Yeah
Wait did you GED
Or did you graduate?
Nah GED
But I feel like I have
Something better than that
I got a better one than that
Which is?
Whatever
Just a better one
Yeah
I got a hundred
I got a hundred on the GED
So they gave me the real thing
Yeah I walked the GED, so they gave me the real thing.
I walked into GED school, South Jamaica, Queens. This is where all the GEDs are schooled?
It's called Flowers with Care.
No, it was a program called Flowers with Care.
Okay.
That's where I got my GED.
I walked in.
The lady was like, what the fuck are you doing here?
Just come back when the test is there.
So I waited.
Two months, came back, got 100 on the test.
So they gave me the good diploma.
Oh, really?
Really?
So you got an official high school diploma.
Without having to go to all four years.
I went to two, smoked a lot of weed, drove around in Honda Accords.
Jesus.
Whose car?
Some fucking one of the homies who at the time he was selling nickel bags
and tray bags
of regular weed
I had the 96 Jetta VR6 Maroon
this is your parents car?
no that's me
when were you stealing
your parents car?
I stole my mother's car at 14
at 14 you started
stealing your mother's car?
I crashed the Jeep Grand Cherokee
and fucking
on the L train.
Wait, on the L train?
Yeah, but not like over
in Williamsburg, like fucking Canarsie
because we went to go do graffiti and I parked
on the side because I'm 14.
And I fucking crashed
on Atlantic Avenue on the way home.
No.
You just kept it moving.
It was already a dent in the car, so she didn't even really notice. She didn't notice? Nah. No. You just kept it moving. Hit and run? Hit and run on a little bit?
There was already a dent in the car, so she didn't even really notice, my man.
She didn't notice?
Nah.
To this day, man, I want the 94 Forest Green Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo.
I think I'm going to buy that tomorrow.
Yeah.
Yeah, with the roof rack.
Roof.
Of course.
Of course.
Where else are you going to put the sofa?
And the mattress.
Okay, and then your girl steals your car and drives it into a Burger King?
Is this a true story?
Oh, my God.
There's been so many different things.
First off, the night before Brett Favre makes his fucking debut for the Jets.
The penal debut.
I don't know if it was the penal debut,
but I believe it was the debut of his arm.
Yes.
It wasn't the peni.
Yeah.
I go to the store.
I have underwear on because I'm up the block from my house.
Yeah.
So I just left in Brecca.
Most Albanian shit.
Exactly.
I just went in underwear. Motherland. I had the money in Breka. Most Albanian shit. Exactly. I just went in underwear.
I had the money in my hand.
Money in my hand.
Cigarette.
But listen to what I went to go get.
Set for life.
Scratch off while I was in underwear.
So I leave the store.
I leave the car around in front of the store.
Set for life.
Scratching it off.
Two vanilla duches,
and a Snapple lemon iced tea.
I go outside, the fucking car is gone.
There were two kids sitting
in front of the store. I didn't even realize,
I didn't even think about it.
They just jumped in the car when I was fucking scratching off.
Oh, shit.
Car stolen.
Gone. Hyundai Sonata.
No, Tucson.
What year did Favre make the debut? That's how I remember. Nolan. Gone. Hyundai Sonata. Woof. No, Tucson. Tucson.
Oh, Tucson.
What year did Favre make the debut?
That's how I remember.
It was brand new?
Brand new, dog.
Wow.
But you know, it was like $12,000 brand new.
Yeah.
It's like some piece of shit.
Thank God they stole it.
Yeah.
Because then I got the Chevy Lumina.
Ooh.
Mint green.
And the wheel was like that permanently.
It wasn't centered.
It was to the side.
So you had to like turn.
You never saw the car go.
And then I crashed that within three days.
Okay.
Because I tried to hit somebody in my building and I fucking backed him.
Wait, why?
What did they do?
We'll get to that.
He was standing right in front of a tree and I I hit the reverse, and I fucking floored it.
And I crashed into the tree.
And then the whole fucking muffler system got stuck in the tree.
Damn.
Now, can you tell us what he did to prompt you to crash the car into him?
He pulled a knife on me in my building.
Inside the building you both lived in?
Yeah, he lived under me.
I was going to the fucking, going to work. Pulled a knife on me in my building. Inside the building you both lived in? Yeah, he lived under me.
I was going to the fucking, going to work.
And it was early in the morning.
I think he'd come home from some sort of like serious situation in the evening of doing an all-nighter.
And he just looked crazy.
Pulled a knife on me.
And then we walked out.
Somehow we just walked away.
And then I saw him walk out of the building and I followed him.
And I fucking predatorized him.
And I tried to, I don't know what I was going to do.
I was trying to hit him with a vehicle.
And I missed.
And then he tried to stab me through the window.
I jumped out of the window.
I fucking caught him.
I earth slammed him.
And I mounted him and pounded his face until the cops came and no one got arrested.
No way.
Wow.
I just asked them
to make a circle
so we could finish it.
They wouldn't.
They wouldn't.
How old are you at this time?
22, 23.
What's the wildest shit
you got away with
because people know you?
Law enforcement know you.
That was pretty wild.
I don't know if they knew him like that.
But that was just a good old day.
Cops not wanting to know.
You know what you get away with?
Fuck all this.
What I've gotten away with the most
is driving without a license,
but I've also got arrested a lot for that shit.
You've never had a license?
I just recently got one.
Oh, nice.
Congrats, bro. Thank you very much.
And I didn't even take
the driving test. The kid just saw me because
it was in my old neighborhood. He was like, yo, here you go.
License.
He took a picture. We drove
around. He asked me a couple questions about some
songs. That was it.
He's like, I got the good license.
You got the GD. I don't think you got a license. I have a license, dog. I have it. He's like, I got the good license. You got the GT.
I don't think you got a license.
I have a license, dog. I have one. I have a passport,
card. I have it all.
Wait, wait, wait.
So you've been driving the majority of your life
without a license? Yeah.
Yes.
When you need to rent a car, what do you do?
Someone else's name.
Wow. Yep.
Yeah.
It's not an easy life having to rely on other people for simple things.
It's really ridiculous, but that's why I got the license.
I was like, man, this is enough.
I'm old.
What the fuck am I doing?
I can't even buy a car in my own name.
When the dude saw you sit down for the appointment, was he like, you don't have a, was he a little
bit surprised to see you? Well, yeah.
He just, he'd followed my life
and my career. I always, I've
mentioned it before, so I was like, I was,
I always wanted to get one.
I wasn't able to. I wasn't able to
actually make the move. Right. I finally
made that move. Yeah, because it's time.
It's time consuming. It's like going to
fucking get the
pre-check.
Yeah.
But every time I go there in the morning and I have to stand on the regular line, I'm infuriated.
So there's a thing I love about you that you don't do anything you don't want to do, but now I'm starting to realize that's not always good.
You know that. Like if you're like, I could be in a five minute line to get pre-checked, but fuck that.
I am destructive.
Sometimes I'm self-destructive.
You know that song
from back in the day?
Yeah.
Self-destruction.
I don't know that song.
Come on, bro.
Do you?
What is the melody?
Don't know her either.
KRS-One?
I know him.
I know him.
They're related in some fashion.
It was kind of like
a We Are The World song.
It was like a save hip-hop.
You know, self-destruction.
Saving yourself from the self-destruction of not knowing yourself.
Yeah, he'd be doing that a lot.
Fix it.
What do you think the craziest thing you've seen on the New York City subway is?
I mean, bro.
Explosive missile shitting on the door.
Sex.
Yeah.
Flashers whacking off.
Yeah.
Break dancing.
Ballroom dancing.
Ballroom is fine.
That's what I'm saying.
I've seen pretty much I don't know what I haven't seen. much, I don't know what I haven't seen.
Yeah.
I don't know what I haven't seen.
Get a little taste of everything.
Yeah, you definitely get a flavor for it all.
Yeah.
What is left to do?
So much.
So much.
For example?
I really love the ocean.
I've been seeing you fucking with Will.
You know Will.
You know Will's school.
I brought these guys out there.
Did you guys have a good time?
It was so fun.
That's what I'm saying.
But you know, Will takes me to the ocean.
Is he pulling you in on the ski?
I have before.
In one of the craziest days ever.
You know, Will could teach me about the water, but he's a surfer.
I'm a bodyboarder.
He can only put me
in the best position possible
and I have to do the rest.
So...
But that man...
He's a...
That's what I'm saying.
Like, I let him...
His family teaches
my child to swim.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They're gonna be
Scootin' alumnus.
Yeah.
So that's how much
I trust them.
So Will Scootin' runs the...
Well, I guess they have
the Scootin' Surf Academy
and they also have, like,
swimming lessons
out in Long Island, but they also have swimming lessons out in Long Island.
But they also made the wave pool in Jersey that we went to.
But Will Scootin' is a fucking big wave surfing.
He's one of the ghosts of Nazare.
Literally one of the big wave surfing legends.
One of the only ones on the East Coast.
For sure, maybe the only one on the island.
Yeah, it's crazy.
Well, there's a kid who just won the Pipe Masters from the island.
Ballerone.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I would say he's the man.
That's crazy.
I've been in the lineup with him.
Really?
I mean, yeah.
When you're out on these certain days, like-
Tell them about the jet ski when you were getting pulled in, because this is kind of gnarly.
Well, I wasn't even as good as I am now.
I wasn't confident.
I didn't have fins on, nothing.
You went barefoot?
Yeah, just pulled up one day.
It was, I don't know, Christmas or some shit.
It was the first snow.
It was like 18 degrees.
It was a hurricane somewhere, and we got crazy waves.
I went out to Long Island, met up with the homie.
He had the jet ski, so I had the wetsuit on.
I had my board.
I hopped on the jet ski.
And he just started taking me in and out of these waves as if we were riding the wave on a board, you know?
But on the jet ski, like taking you into the fucking heart of the wave.
Yeah.
That was a next level experience.
He's getting towed in, essentially.
But this was before I even got towed in.
I was just sitting on the thing while we were like...
Oh! Yeah, he was fucking...
You got to feel where you're supposed to be on the wave.
But not only that, he was just... He's like, watch
this. We're going to get tucked on the wave on the jet
ski. Yeah. So the same thing that you would
do on the board, he used the fucking jet ski
and was in the goddamn wave. Wow.
So all that stuff... You're getting barreled
while you're on the jet ski. Barreled on the ski.
Are you on the shit and behind that's being dragged?
Yeah.
No, no, no, no, no.
That's when he picks you up.
I was just sitting behind him.
So you guys are getting barreled.
I'm holding him and we're getting barreled.
I'm like, oh shit.
I'm holding the board.
I'm holding him.
Yeah.
So then he fucking, he's like, all right, this next one, I'm going to tell you when to jump and you just jump.
All right.
So he pulls me and he goes, jump. I jumped. you when to jump, and you just jump. All right. So he pulls me, and he goes, jump.
I jumped.
And I'm like, all right, vroom.
And I'm just fucking gliding.
And I just see the waves start curling over my head.
And I just think to myself, motherfucker, this is ridiculously amazing.
I was just like, oh, shit.
Have you been to Slater's pool yet?
No.
We might need to go do that.
It's a 100% fact I'm going to perform in that pool.
Bro, that wave is made for me.
That's a boogie wave.
That's a boogie wave.
Because you're tucked in the whole time.
You come in, you just get fucking sitting there and just carve.
They made a Slater Wave in Abu Dhabi that opened a week after we left.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
I was fucking bummed about that.
But, yeah, Slater's Wave.
I hit him, matter of fact, recently.
He's like, bro, you got to come out and check the Wave.
But I'm saying if I go, we got to.
You invite me, I'm there.
Done.
I'm there.
I mean, it's all-time experience.
Bro, I'm there. I'm trying to go mean, it's all-time experience. Bro, I'm there.
I'm trying to go to all these places.
Switzerland invited me.
Go to Waco.
Waco, Texas has one.
I heard that was a crazy one.
That one is incredible.
I think that one is the most ocean-like.
Because with Slaters, you've got to wait, I think.
It's like a five-minute wait for the train to basically come back to create the next wave.
Got it, got it.
This one is similar to scooting,
where it just pumps out three waves at a time.
I love that.
Four waves at a time.
I mean, I've seen a lot of them.
Scooting makes 10 or 20 different waves.
Yeah, it's crazy.
Like, cool fucking waves that you can really, like, perform on, too.
Do you prefer the ocean or being in a pool?
Nah, I prefer, I love the ocean, but the pool is the,
that's where you train, that's the training ground.
That's the gym.
All that, yeah, it's the gym. All that time in the ocean, but the pool is the, that's where you train. That's the training ground. That's the gym. All that, yeah, it's the gym.
All that time in the pool, bro.
At one point, I was in the pool almost every other day when they were testing it. Really?
Really.
I would lose 10 pounds daily being in that pool.
Because you do five or 10 laps before you get on the wave, and then he runs it consecutively
for an hour or two hours.
Yeah.
And if you try and catch in a wave
every two minutes,
that's cardio, man. I would leave
there my fucking hip flexors, everything.
So ripped at that point.
Yeah.
I just want to be shredded by
tonight. I know you want it back.
I just want to be shredded so bad.
Why not get on the, what is it called?
The peptides, get on the...
I don't want that bullshit.
I want the real gear.
You want steroids.
Wait a minute.
The peptides ain't the real gear?
Nah.
I want fucking Ronnie Coleman.
I want...
Oh.
No, what is it called?
What is it called?
Tren?
Is that the...
Tremble on?
Tren is...
You use that in conjunction with things.
You've taken steroids before.
Yeah, when I was 24, it let me down because I was taking like project steroids.
My homie was making the tren.
Wait, wait, wait.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Come on.
My boy Musclehead Ed was making the tren.
Musclehead Ed.
He was making it.
What is making it?
He was drinking all the time.
You order it and you let it drip into the bottle and it's yellow and you just shoot it in your ass.
So he was shooting in your ass?
Yeah.
And how did you guys get to that level of comfort?
He was like, yo.
You don't fucking bend over to shoot juice, bro.
You just have to like shake your leg a little bit.
Fully fucking grabbing your ankle and take the juice.
I'm getting fucked for no reason.
You stand up, you fucking turn your head,
make sure that the fucking cheek muscle is
showing, you fucking jam it. Bite the pillow.
It's not that hard.
You don't bite pillows.
What are you biting a pillow for? Why is there a pillow in your mouth?
That's what I'm trying to figure out, bro.
But for real, why is that?
That's what the dude that gave me the steroids said to do.
Why do you pull your pants all the way down when you do it?
That's what he told me to do.
I was in the locker room.
I was like, how do I get like you?
He said, I'll show you.
I didn't know that there was another way.
That's crazy.
I got to get with five ways.
I got to get with so many ways, man.
Musclehead.
Now, you don't want to go with him.
He'll hurt you.
He'll hurt your butt.
Where's he at now?
Where's Musclehead?
I don't know.
Nah, he's there.
You know,
I don't know what we were shooting.
Corn oil,
whatever the fuck.
Tahini?
Yeah, rubber cement.
Why are we all on that shit?
Nah, that's in Jackson Heights.
Rubber cement,
they shoot your ass.
Oh, for the asses.
That's bad.
On the roof.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If you want to get an ass fucking situation on the roof
I got Jackson Ice
What's that strip club out there called?
Which one?
Sugar Daddies?
I don't know the name
Mermaids?
There's some Colombian like official
They're all from Colombia
They usually don't have a name
It's usually just a casa
It's a house
It's an address
That's the good shit
Well Depending on what you want I think y'all talking about different things It's usually just a casa, it's a house, it's an address. That's the good shit.
Well, depending on what you want.
I think you're talking about different things.
There's usually a guy that walks you around the block
six times to make sure everything's good,
then walks you in the house.
Then you go into the apartment.
What is that like?
Yeah, tell us about those strip clubs.
Those, the Chica Chica house, man,
I don't know what to say.
Just craziness?
That was just the period in Queens, you know?
I don't know what else to say about that.
I mean, how much is it?
$30.
For everything?
To get in.
It's not the club.
You don't pay to get in.
You pay for six.
Ladies free before six.
The fuck are they doing there?
Wiping the shit out of them.
It's not a nice thing to do.
What's that?
Illegal sex work.
It has to be legal.
I agree with that.
Yo, hold on.
Yeah, is all
sex work is kind of illegal?
In New York, we have
illegal access. Unsanctioned sex work.
Unsanctioned, that's a better name for it.
It's not illegal. It's just unsanctioned.
Well, who's the sanctioning body?
That has to be determined.
The New York State Athletic Commission.
That's what you need.
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let's get back to the show what is the best strip club in the city that you've been to i don't like
strip clubs really no why not i don't waste money. I fuck.
I'm not going to throw my money.
What is it?
A lap dance?
I don't want to be danced on.
Fuck the girl or dunk.
I don't understand this.
It's not just that.
It's just like I like romance.
I don't want my shorts to smell like fucking vagina.
Yeah.
Without?
Without sanctioning.
Yeah, yeah. Really, Without sanctioning.
Really, the sanctioning is the issue.
We don't want to go against the body.
I don't know. I'm trying to think about it.
The strip club could be fun.
I think it could be fun.
You need to have the right group.
If you're going there dolo, it's a little weird.
But if you have the right group...
It depends if there's a good chicken there.
If they have a chicken Milanese.
Oh, you're talking about back in the day
where there was a menu.
Down south, that's important.
Because the people are there for lunch.
It's the lunch crowd.
Yeah, lunch break.
The rush.
Going to a strip club on your lunch break?
No, it's like a lunch meeting.
Power lunches go down there.
King of Diamonds has amazing wings, apparently.
It's unbelievable.
What's the other one in Atlanta?
Magic City?
Magic City.
I always had dreams of going to those.
Those I'd go to.
You've never been.
How have you not done a food review in the strip club?
I feel like that's so like, it's expected.
You think it's expected?
Yeah.
Well, thank you.
God damn, bro.
You know what's original?
Doing food in Paris.
I'll tell you this.
I haven't seen another fucking person do it better than me.
That's true.
You got the best.
I mean, it's incredible.
It's incredible.
I was going to say, I've done a food review from the whorehouse before because I had a dinner because it was one of the girls' birthdays.
So they made rice and beans and cake.
Ten of ten.
Really?
They call that a power dinner?
No, that was just like a birthday
dinner.
Colombian girl?
Who was the girl? No, I don't know.
I don't know. Dominican maybe?
I mean, rice and beans.
It could be literally anywhere.
It could be from any fucking country.
Anywhere.
Did you fuck with Tokyo? Hell yeah. I figure you'd like it. I love Tokyo the attention to detail
That's really what it's about details. Everything is you know, everything's the same unless you fucking pay attention to the details
Culturally, they are just like obsessed with perfection
perfecting a thing
Every every Japanese man that I know is amazing and their
passion drives them towards one thing.
I know
one of the best shoemakers,
glass blowers.
They only care about making fucking
rice. They're very
singular minded but
the best.
The joy is in the expertise of it.
That's something that I wish
I had more of in me.
But I have too much of a, like,
I'm too curious about all kinds of different stuff.
I can't just focus on one thing.
Yeah, the thing about it is, like,
they're trying to perfect a thing,
but that might not be your passion.
And what's perfection?
That's another thing, right?
Like, I find so much perfection and imperfections.
I think you lose a little bit of the art.
I feel like I have to because I'm not perfect.
But not only that, it's like, what makes the flavor of the steak?
The fat, right?
I mean, that's fucking deep.
It could be the animal
where it comes from,
what it ate.
I'm just saying, like,
you need a little fat.
Oh, yeah, you need that.
You need that.
You know Colin Quinn,
iconic New York comic.
He was talking about, like,
sometimes comics are trying
to cut all the fat
out of their jokes,
and it's like the fat
brings the flavor.
Don't cut all the fat.
You can't just hit them
with nonstop fucking zingers. It being imperfect is, no, imperfect no no let it be imperfect that's what we might love about
you so i think that was my one thing about when i was in japan i was seeing like i had incredible
pizza i had incredible steak i had all these things were incredible and i was like wait is
the only goal perfection like where's the guy who's not perfect where's this where's the the
steak that might be a little bit a little bit undercooked or something like that?
Where is the imperfection here?
Like the grandma's cooking type shit.
Grandma's food wasn't perfect, but it was.
You know what I mean?
You're damn right.
That's the food that we fucking crave.
That's the food we lust over.
It's the feeling that it gave you.
Yeah, exactly.
And the feeling's perfect.
And so if an imperfect thing brings out the perfect feeling, then maybe it's perfect.
I went to that Giro's.
Fucking beautiful.
Beautiful thought.
You know Giro's?
Seattle?
Nah, in Tokyo.
Vancouver?
Nah, the Giro dreams of sushi.
The guy.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But like OG guy dedicated his life to one thing, right?
Like the rice got to be perfect.
The fish has to be perfect, whatever.
And bro, it was the worst sushi I had in Tokyo.
Sushi wasn't that good.
I thought it was ass.
How upsetting is that?
It's fucking asshole.
And they did a whole fucking movie about this weirdo.
And he was there.
And his little son was there.
And it sucked, bro.
Shit.
Over wasabi.
Like, couldn't even keep it down almost.
25 minutes.
They move you out your seat.
The second you finish the last one to another one, then they give you this expensive-ass melon.
You got to chill out.
You know how they are over there.
You're going to make them.
You know how we are, bro.
I was like, bro, drop another one, bro.
Oh, my God.
I was like, bro.
I was like, what is this?
Come on now.
Nah.
Come on now.
You're going to disappear in a forest.
Oppenheimer, get back at it, bro.
I don't know, bro.
God damn.
I don't know, bro.
Yakuza is going to pull up on you.
Nah, nah. Chill out, Yakuza.
They got a Yakuza spot in the city on the west side over on like 53rd Street.
There's like a gentleman's club.
I don't know if it's Yakuza, but it's like Japanese gentleman's club.
Like, oh no, 53rd and like the east side.
And it's just dudes in suits pulling up, going to this spot.
Women not allowed in.
Like real official this spot. Women not allowed in. Like, real official
Japanese spot.
I like the Asian
gangs that used to be all around here.
The Flying Dragons.
What do you mean you like them?
I mean,
of all the gangs.
Hey, listen,
based on high school, I've seen
seven Chinese kids jump
out of a Honda fucking Civic.
I was standing next to this kid that had an issue with them.
Kid, fuck, I don't know, must have been 20 feet away, jump kicked him fucking through the metal fence.
He had the one piece of yellow hair in front of his eye.
You know what I'm talking about?
Did he finish him?
He finished him with the crazy flying kick.
And then they literally, he walked away.
Wow.
Flying crane, bro.
The no can't defend.
I was just talking to this kid out of nowhere, seven, boom, 20 feet away, flying kick, game
over.
Did you feel like you had to defend him?
No, I had nothing to do with that.
You just enjoyed the show.
They didn't come for me.
I was just standing there.
The kick flew right there.
Hit the person it was meant for, and then everyone walked away.
Yeah, mid-conversation, knockout.
It's rare you see flying kick mid-convo.
That's why I'm telling you about this, because that shit's stuck with me since high school.
Since high school, it's stuck with me.
Did your boy even remember what happened?
I hear when you get knocked out.
I don't even remember that fucking weirdo's name.
You got knocked out from watching it. I'm like, whoa. I your boy even remember what happened? I hear when you get knocked out. I don't even remember that fucking weirdo's name. You got knocked out
from watching it.
He's a weirdo.
I was like, whoa.
I don't even remember
what happened.
Did you get into fights
in high school?
Always.
Yeah?
Yeah, you get into fights
everywhere.
Did you like fighting?
Or did you have to do it?
I enjoy fight,
but you know,
I enjoy a nice handshake
after a fight.
Yeah.
I don't know why.
I feel like it's competition.
Even if there was an issue,
even if you fucking get the best
of me, I'm still going to shake your hand.
It is what it is.
Would the fights ever have weapons in them?
No. It was always just hands.
Well, yeah. I guess
a lock, like a master
lock on the knuckle. That's a weapon, right?
That's a very serious weapon. That's definitely a weapon, dude.
You would throw a master lock on it?
I didn't do that.
No, I wouldn't.
I've gotten hit with that.
And just KO?
No, I've never been KO'd.
You've never been knocked out?
No.
Not even sparring or nothing?
No.
Body shot?
I don't remember ever taking a very hard body shot.
I'm sure I would get KO'd from a body shot.
That's the only time I've been dropped sparring.
Body shot. I mean... You can't move. from a body shot. That's the only time I've been drop sparring. Body shot.
You can't move. You can't be tough about it.
Yeah, I know. I like to wrestle. I like to grapple.
I like to fucking submit and hurt.
You do jiu-jitsu? I do it all.
What is the rest?
Wrestle. Okay.
Fucking bango
zen. You don't know?
You don't do bango zen? No.
You don't do Krav Maga? No. Krav Maga I've heard of. Krav't know? You don't do bangles in? No. You don't do Krav Maga?
No. Krav Maga I've heard of.
Krav Maga? Yeah. Or Krav Maga?
Krav Maga sounds like
Krav Maga. That's a country music art.
Country music. Yeah.
It's like Herb McGruff
of Harlem World.
It's one of my favorite rappers. You know about Herb
McGruff? Yeah. Sick.
Children of the Corn back in the day.
Deep cut.
But yeah, no, I like to fucking tussle around.
I like to fucking get after it.
I like to grapple.
Headbutt.
Headbutt.
I like fucking unorthodox things.
You listen to Big L growing up?
Of course.
That's what I was just talking about,
like Children of Corn.
Big L,
Herbert Ruff,
Cam, Mase.
Yeah, that's what you...
Bloodshed.
Yeah, L was just this...
I remember that happening.
Big L was like the first...
I don't want to say first rapper,
but he was a rapper
that I remember growing up
and I was like,
wow,
this is just word of mouth. He made you laugh. Bro, punchline. That rapper that I remember growing up and I was like, wow, this is just word of mouth.
He made you laugh.
Bro, punchline. That's what I'm saying.
The punchlines make you laugh and it's like,
holy shit, it's just crazy also.
Ass Beavis, I get nothing but head.
I mean, that shit gives you chills.
That's one of those rap lines that give you chills.
I feel like, were you doing that?
That was the first thing I ever started
doing was trying to do one-liners about the color of a car.
You know when Jadakiss would say that he got to vanquish the color of water?
Yeah, yeah.
I would try and come up with a car the color of something
or the temperature of something.
Yeah.
Hot tomato.
Hot fucking purple. Yeah. Temper tomato. Hot fucking purple.
Yeah.
Temperature, color.
Temperature, vegetable, fruit.
That's the template.
Yeah.
And it's with everything, describing everything.
Just to make your boys laugh?
It was always about making my friends laugh.
You make them laugh, you know, it's like coming up with those crazy one-liners that no one else is going to think of.
Real off-the-wall shit.
Is there a line that you had that people, when they saw you, would come up and say it?
So many.
I actually, the ones that I respect the most are the lines I think are the headiest, you know?
When someone comes up to me and says a certain one, I'm like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah.
For example?
I can't think of it right now, but I'm like, all right, yeah, you fucking get it.
Like if they say a specific thing that hits my heart, I'm like, oh, yeah, you understand.
Yeah.
I'm glad that you chose that one line to tell me.
You think that there's people that found out about you through non-rap content and then went back to your rap and are surprised how nice you are?
Yeah, 100% because at this point, a lot of people know me for the food show.
They know me, but there's people that know me just from rap.
Because oftentimes when a rapper has a personality,
the bars might not be there.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't want to call
specific people,
but it's like,
they're bigger
than they are,
like, rappers.
Exactly.
They're bigger
than they are good.
Exactly.
And the personality
is its own thing,
but you spit, bro.
Thank you, bro.
For sure.
For me, man,
rap,
there's not many people on earth that I think could rap with me.
And that's just being me.
I'm not like a fucking boastful guy.
That's just a fact.
For me, in my mind, rap sucks.
Rappers suck.
They don't have experiences.
The things they say aren't interesting.
It's really all about finding interesting music and saying interesting things, at least for me.
I have a diversity and a crazy amount of different things that you can say that'll touch me.
I get a whole bunch of shit.
It's a thirst for experience.
That's what I'm saying.
Like you said,
I want to think.
I want someone to make me laugh.
I want someone to mention something that I thought only I know about.
We got this thing in stand-up
where sometimes a comic will be up there
and they'll tell a joke.
And they'll be like,
I told that joke one time in Oklahoma
and this was the reaction
and the joke is about that and the second i see that i'm like oh you ain't living enough yeah no
your whole life is just on stage so there's nothing for you to pull from and that's why i
thought i mean i remember when i was you know looking some stuff up for you it's like i feel
like you're one of those guys that could continue rapping till much later in life because the identity is never built around youth it's
built around passion for sure so it's like i don't you don't want to stop anytime soon right no not
at all i mean i'm not pressure i've been cooking because you're not 25 it's like that's the whole
thing like i look at myself and i still feel like i exude some sort of youthfulness in my passion for things,
sure, I'm fucking weathered.
Sure, I've been through the ringer of life,
but I still have all kinds of new experiences
to bring to the world and new type of new energy.
Like right now, I feel better than I've ever felt ever.
Musically, like I would like right now I feel better than I've ever felt ever musically like I'm just as because you grow with confidence as you succeed and
you do things and yeah like just that tiny desk gave me a whole fucking new
breath of fresh air with that like you know the other time what a lot of people
don't give a fuck about that you watch big artists tiny desk and then no one
gives a fuck about it, really.
Nah, bro.
This one went the fuck off.
People seemed to really gravitate to it and enjoy it, and that shows.
You were lost in it, bro.
Also, the opening.
I imagine you're curating and orchestrating all this, right?
Song choice, everything.
I'm lucky to have some tremendous musicians around me.
I feel like I have.
Those are your guys or those guys?
Yeah, those are my guys.
So with Tiny Desk, you bring your guys?
I finally got my guys.
I never had a group of people that I'm confident with.
My man on the keys and the sax is crazy.
Young Mexico, Matt Carillo.
He's one of the best musicians on earth right now.
And I tell everybody this.
I feel like all my guys are that.
Young Mexico is the best saxophone player on planet Earth right now. I love it.
For real. I love it. For real.
Man, that motherfucker makes
everybody cry.
I'm on stage going through it
and it ain't no joke.
I'm fucking crying.
You can tell you're locked in.
Crying. This motherfucker is literally
like the most
whimsical, gentle human being I've ever met.
And just like.
Nah, it set a tone.
God damn, fucking, I don't know.
I don't know the terminology they use in the horn world, but man, he could blow that thing.
Yeah, the tone was, even the first song, like, knock him out the box.
That's right.
But.
You gotta set the tone. Yo, it's, there's a, even the first song, like, knock them out the box. That's right. But. You gotta set the tone.
No, it's, there's a confidence to it.
It is an arrogance.
It's like, hey, I'm supposed to be here, and I'm nice, and I'm gonna show you why I'm nice.
And then immediately after it, you're just like, so affected by the music.
You, like, there's a great part, the last one, you're doing the banger, obviously, where it looked like you were
a little scared to sing.
Were you?
There was a lot of 40-year-old women in there
and I'm saying, bitch, and fucking this.
I didn't want to say...
There were certain things I didn't...
I didn't want to say, I might not be able
to touch my toes, but I will still
fuck these hoes while I'm looking directly
at a 40-year-old woman.
It's NPR.
Keep that in mind.
Tiny Desk is run by NPR, right?
I remember you apologized.
You're like, I'm sorry.
I apologized because there was
a fucking kid standing right there.
And I loved that moment.
I was like, man, you know,
like, bro, you're going to have to...
No, this is the funniest part.
You bring the fucking kid,
you're going to hear some shit.
He goes, he goes,
yeah, I'm sorry.
I just want to let you guys know
I can't touch my toes. He didn't say, I i can that was a big thing for me at one point i
couldn't touch him and it's like oh shit yeah that's how simple that was i didn't even breathe
like i didn't even breathe how did you prep for the tiny dust were you nervous at all going into
it i didn't prep no prep at all no No, there was some- I don't prep.
I don't prep.
With the band?
We had been doing a couple of shows.
We had just done a couple of shows, and man, we caught lightning in a bottle.
Those guys are sick every night, but that was one of the best performances we've had.
Also, when-
Everyone was on fire.
When you fucked up the line and you said, run it back, and then kept it in.
That's how I do, no matter what.
If I fuck up, I'm running it back.
You don't deserve that. You don't deserve that.
I don't deserve that.
I have to fix it.
It's a great tiny desk.
And I've seen a few tiny desks, too.
And there's some people that have these, like,
I think that's real, obviously,
to say it sounds obvious,
but I'm considerate when I'm saying it.
It's a real performer stage,
meaning if you have that skill.
There's some people who make music that's great to ride to. But when you see them perform it, rap's a real performer stage, meaning if you have that skill. There's some people who make music
that's great to ride to,
but when you see them perform it,
rap, a lot of times, it's boring.
Lackluster.
Rap, look, he sucks live.
It's trash.
I'm not a fan of it live.
It's trash.
Almost every rap concert I went to live,
I'm like, why am I here?
It's embarrassing.
It's actually embarrassing.
I know this.
You need live instruments.
I don't know why.
Jay-Z figured that out as well
when he did the Rock Nation orchestra.
And I remember seeing that live and I was like, ooh, this is a different feeling.
And the energy, it taps into human, I don't know, that primal instinct.
You need it.
You need to feel percussion.
You need to feel the strings.
Hearing 20 or 30 people playing in unison is powerful.
I mean, to have an orchestra, it's only Jay-Z could do that. Hearing 20 or 30 people playing in unison is powerful.
I mean, to have an orchestra, it's only Jay-Z could do that,
or like Em, dudes of that nature.
It's not easy to put together quality musicians to play music.
Luckily for me, my music isn't like rappity rap beats.
Because to me, that shit sucks.
When you bring a guy in, you're like a band playing a hip-hop beat they're trying to recreate something that was made exactly yeah it's like what we're playing is
i'm using the most incredible samples of music like the pieces of music that are already instruments
yeah it's the best musicians that are playing the instruments there that's why you're playing
the best piece of music that could possibly be made.
Like, singled out.
You don't have to play
a breakbeat over it
where there's a chance
for it to fuck up.
You have to play
the goddamn groove
and that's it.
There's a...
You get to be a real musician.
Yeah.
Not a hip-hop band.
Yeah.
It reminds me of like,
you ever see, like most of the times you see like a Van Gogh, right?
You see a print of it, right?
That has no texture at all.
And then you see it in real life and you realize this is a three-dimensional fucking painting.
And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
This is what it was meant to be seen as.
And this is what I'm supposed to be indulgent in.
I feel like that's the same way when you're trying to take something
that was made electronically and turn it into
music. It's better than nothing, but
when you take the thing that's meant to be
and was born through instruments
and then you play that. This means a lot to me
because you get it. That means
you understand. But the live
performance, I've always thought about that, especially
rap. It's like, bro, the majority
of... If you're only in it for money, I've always thought about that with like especially rap. It's like bro the majority of I
Don't even like if you're only in it for money Let's say you are not you but the average person let's say that's into rap is like only for money
Like you have to recognize that the live show. There's a reason why people are not gonna tune in
That's a humongous part. I mean if you're lucky enough to just have
Massive hits and you're not that talented talented you don't have to take your show
on the road yeah i take my show on the road because it's like worth coming to see there's
people who really want to come and fucking watch me every night yeah because i put on
a fucking experience like i literally you you get everything you get you get comedy you get
fucking emotion you get some of the most incredible music.
It's like a roller coaster of emotion you get.
I heard two friends that went to different concerts of yours.
One in Dallas where I grew up.
They said you took an outside microphone outside on the street very quickly.
Oh, yeah.
And then another one.
This is a fire.
What do you mean outside?
I mean, I've been doing that forever.
Like, I usually leave the venue.
I'll take people outside
with me in the street.
It's like Steve Martin
used to do this.
Yeah, just like dumped.
Like, just fucking,
I used to go up
in the fucking mezzanine
and just go,
just dump shit.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I used to go in the crowd a lot.
Love.
That stopped, though.
What?
They started fucking trampling me.
Bro, I had fucking 20 people hanging on my neck
you know it's crazy yeah it's crazy this is a cool story and this is when i started to understand
there's like a mythology around you that you live up to my friend comic friend of ours matt pavich
been a fan of yours forever queens guy hell yeah and he said he was going to your concert saw your
car recognize your car was a gold something something that you've read about homies driving
you're in the passenger seat he said you'd remember this story they they're like yo action action action
you roll down the window they roll down the window you flick a fat ass wrapper joint on the highway
directly into their car 100 and i remember throwing this joint into their window
i couldn't fucking believe it made it in and he said i'm saying i'm fucking nice like that i knew the
wind i had to throw it this way and then the velocity brought it directly into that window
and then he said he went to the concert it was with that's racist that's how long ago it's a
rap band local new york band shouts to hemes but like yeah man decade ago and then he said you just
didn't like the energy of the crowd or something and it's not legal at this point but you go grab a fucking hefty bag of wheat and just start throwing it
into the crowd yeah which is just like in 2013 14 whatever like there's cops there he said the
cops were just like i don't know if we're supposed to arrest this guy or they loved it
i fucking loved it i've given away so many things. I've given away full barbecues.
Like assembled barbecues.
Like a grill?
Yeah.
Smoker.
I've thrown that into the crowd.
Yeah.
Not before Traeger came out.
This was like a...
The Weber.
Yeah, not before Weber.
He went to one of your shows at Terminal 5
and you just threw a 70-inch TV box right at you.
So yeah, Terminal 5.
I did these two shows in 2015
for my Mr. Wonderful album.
Two sold-out nights.
I fucking went to Circuit City.
I went to Circuit City.
I bought a 70-inch TV.
I bought an iPad.
I had a couple of iPhones laying around.
I had some other electronical products that I brought out, a fucking Xbox at the time,
and I just threw all that shit into the crowd.
When I threw the fucking TV, to this day, there's a picture, bro.
It was a sea of humanity.
It was pandemonium.
It was pandemonium.
That's a different type of love because not one lawsuit
probably. Never, never, never.
I've also stage dived
and I definitely could have broken someone's
whole neck when I was 380.
You stage dived at 380? Yeah, they held me up.
God bless. 47 people held me
up.
Hold on, is this it?
Let's see this
As Toto's playing
Overhand?
Overhand
Son, that's crazy
That's crazy
See, that's a different type of love
There's some good ones, man
I fucking
I've thrown
I did this show called Outside Lands in the Bay Area.
It was a food and music festival.
And I was doing the food stage and I had like 50 chicken palms wrapped up.
There was a tree, I don't know, like 30 yards away.
This kid was perched in a tree 20 feet up in the air.
Brady.
Screaming for it.
Everyone was like, throw it.
So I went back.
Fucking jammed it right in his fucking
stomach.
Jammed it in his stomach, bro. If he would've
deviated an inch that way, he would've fell
out of the tree. And you made the chicken parm?
Because that's like your dish, right? The homie made the chicken parm.
But I also, we also brought a full lamb out. I was ripping legs off and throwing them into the tree. And you made the chicken parm? Because that's like your dish, right? The homie made the chicken parm. But I also, we also brought a full
lamb out. I was ripping legs off
and throwing them into the crowd.
I threw a fucking lamb
arm into the crowd and this girl fucking
scooped like he, it was like
a fucking rugby. He picked
her up, she grabbed the fucking ball
and fucking
started going ripping the lamb arm.
Where did you learn
to be a showman like this?
Like, who was the person
that inspired you?
ECW.
Oh, it's wrestling.
Oh, wrestling.
Also, lambs got arms.
What do they have?
Two legs, four legs?
What legs?
What's that?
Yeah, that's an arm.
You get with the shoulder.
So a dog got two legs
and two arms?
Well, yeah.
If it's a shoulder,
he's saying the front one.
If it's a lamb shoulder, it doesn't connect to a leg.
That's fair.
The shoulder don't connect to the leg.
That's fair.
You got me there.
Like if a lamb was to wear pants, it wouldn't wear pants on the front and pants on the legs.
Yeah, it would go.
Yeah, it would be a shirt and then leg pants.
Yeah, idiot.
That's a lamb walk, bro.
That's a lamb walk.
That's a bicep.
That's a bicep.
Yeah, exactly. But it was all wrestling that inspired the live show. I would imagine, idiot. That's a lamb walk, bro. That's a lamb walk. Yeah, exactly.
But it was all wrestling that inspired the live show.
I would imagine, man.
I've been a fucking huge fan of extreme wrestling my entire life.
I don't know, just shit like that.
I don't really know.
I have a lot of VHS tapes.
My grandfather left me so many VHSs.
Lethal Weapon.
All of them.
Yeah.
All on VHS. Yeah.
The only DVDs
I have is like
early UFC ones.
Got all the Disney movies in the plastics.
Okay. Come on, dog.
Terminator 2
fucking pornos.
If you've taped over them. Okay. Come on, dog. Terminator 2 fucking pornos. Because you've taped over them.
Oh.
Yeah.
Did DMX inspire the live show at all?
No, but he did inspire my child to come out of my wife's stomach.
How so?
Which?
Well, we were in labor for 18 hours with fucking flute music playing.
Okay.
And she said, turn that fucking shit off.
So I put DMX on.
There you go.
Stop, drop, shut him down, open up shop.
And my son popped out.
Wow.
Wow.
I never got the chance to tell him that, but I wish I would have.
So your son just refused to come out to that gay flute shit.
No, until DMX started screaming.
He's like, I'm ready.
They started barking.
Oh, oh, oh ready he just popped out
Tim's on
he came out with Tim
eating broccolis though
yeah
did you ever see
X live show?
no
but I watched the
I watched the performance
at Woodstock
I was about to bring that up
the red overalls
yeah the red overalls I watch you like that all the time I I was about to bring that up, man. The Red Oval. Yeah, the Red Oval.
I watch it like that all the time.
I love videos like that.
I love the Soul Sacrifice performance from the original Woodstock, Santana.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I love to watch this one video
of the Tres Bravos de Piano,
Papa Luca, Eddie Palmieri, and fucking Larry Harlow, the Fania All-Stars.
Okay.
Like three of the best salsa pianists that's ever lived.
Mm-hmm.
I love watching shit like that.
I get hyped up.
What about speeches?
Not really for me.
Are you like a Jimmy Vee cancer speech?
Nah. Have you seen it? Yeah, cancer speech. Nah.
Have you seen it?
Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
Come on.
Been watching SportsCenter since the fucking Jimmy V Cancer Foundation.
Yeah.
They got a fucking game all the time.
Yeah.
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What's your favorite sport right now?
Mixed martial arts.
Yeah.
You watch a lot of UFC?
Just all of it.
I watch everything, yeah.
Who's the most exciting fighter right now for you?
That's really tough to say.
There's an abundant amount of exciting fighters.
I like watching.
I'm locked in.
I'm locked in on everything. I saw you hanging
with Cheeto. He seems like a cool guy.
Cheeto's a legend. Cheeto's my guy.
We don't just hang. That's my bro.
That's my guy. It's probably cool
seeing his come up and how he's been rising to the ranks.
That's what I'm saying. You know, like you attach
somebody before you even know them and then now
you just, man, he's fucking
on the brink, bro. He's right there.
How did you guys link up at first?
I just was a fan of his.
I saw we were following.
He followed me.
I followed him back.
I just let him know that I'm a big fan.
Me and my boy Mike Rojas, we've been fucking with him because, you know, Ecuadorian.
I feel like there's...
Synergy.
When I met him, we fucking, we were talking, smoking.
We found out we had the same birthday.
So, you know, it's like magic.
It was the reason why I gravitated to the kid before I even knew, you know?
You ever thought about getting in the octagon?
Fuck out of here.
I'm 275.
Think about who I got to fight.
Yeah.
John Johnson.
Come on
Sergi Pavlich
Fucking Tom Aspinall
Aspinall's a beast
Yeah we're good
I'm good on all that
You can take him bro
Do you ever play as yourself as your own character in UFC?
I have before yeah
Yeah you're a character that's awesome
That's pretty crazy right?
I used to play as you back in the day
I'm a four star heavyweight I have before, yeah. Yeah, you're a character. That's awesome. Yeah, I know. That's pretty crazy, right? I used to play as you back in the day, UFC 4.
I'm a four-star heavyweight.
Yeah.
How do you, what do you do differently to be successful in building businesses outside of entertainment?
I tend to, I don't know.
I think that I'm interested in things that other people just, they don't even think to be interested in.
I always, I'm a professional in everything. But not only that, it's like,
other people might have interest, but it feels like you'll execute on it.
Get in the wine out or get in the olive oil out. I'm just curious personally, what is the process?
Do you go, hey, I wanna make wine, or do they approach you with it? Well, as far as a wine, that's a bit difficult with alcohol and stuff like that.
So with winemakers, you have to feel it.
Yeah.
You have to fucking like to want to work with somebody.
Yeah.
That, you know, olive oil is a little bit easier for me.
I taste what I want.
I talk with my man who is the top oleologist on earth
who also plays bass in the band with me,
my man Nicholas Coleman.
That's what I'm saying.
We have a lot.
That's a random connection.
Bro, it's crazy.
He plays fucking an unbelievable bass.
This Berkeley graduate also happens to be
the top expert on olive oil on earth.
So he's just a brilliant guy.
So that's how we work.
He chases the harvest, northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere, depending on the time of year.
And we get the freshest oil we taste from different people that he's built relationships throughout the years.
I taste the best.
We come to a conclusion. I do the art
and we execute. Okay. Do you have like your business people
making contracts and stuff like this? How do you make it official? That's the thing.
Well, with people like that, it's official when you have a lawyer and a handshake.
That's it. Yeah. Done. Okay. And this is separate, but something that I want to give some credit to.
Did you edit your old stuff or do you have an editor that was doing it?
As far as what?
Even your old vlogs and stuff like that were edited in a really funny way.
Meaning like there were moments that weren't funny, but because of the editing, they're hilarious.
Well, when I was with editing, they're hilarious.
Well, when I was with Vice, I've been working with one producer forever, my man Chris Grosso.
Literally, he sees the show while it's happening.
Bro. So with Ancient Aliens, while we were watching that shit, at time that Vic Berger dude, you remember Vic Berger?
He would do all those crazy cuts.
Crazy edits.
So we used him to edit the Ancient Alien shows
and people of that mind frame
to make weird things funny that's not funny.
You know, like if I touch your leg,
he would just be like,
do a close-up of me just touching your ankle very gently.
It'd be classic.
So they're injecting the comedy into it.
Some of that, but a lot of the food stuff,
it's just done in a different vein.
We're moving at a different speed, man.
But there's a moment where you and the dude,
there's a black dude that's with you,
and you guys are eating a patty that's inside a sandwich somewhere.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah, my man Mayhem.
And he goes,
what do you think about it?
And he goes,
I think it's a good patty.
And then you go,
that's some good commentary.
And then you walk off.
But most editors
wouldn't put that there.
Because they're like, I don't put that there, right?
Because they're like, I don't know if this is pushing the show or whatever. But I feel like there's a lot of those moments that make the show feel more authentic.
That's really weird.
Keeping the awkwardness.
Of course.
Like there's a joke that you're, I'm even watching one and like you make a joke in one of the kitchens and it kind of bombs.
And then you kind of call it out.
Everything bombs.
But that's the beauty of it.
No.
Because it's like, hey.
That's some of my favorite shit is bombing.
Let me tell you something.
I wish I could fucking show you some of the movie auditions I've done.
Oh, that would be fun.
Bro, if we could get the fucking audition I did for Uncut Gems, we'd all be fucking dying right now.
Hold on.
Should I hit up?
Hit him up.
Let me hit up Benny.
Hit him up.
I know those motherfuckers got it
because I want to see it.
What character?
Who I don't know.
I was in the fucking,
in the store talking some shit.
I made believe Shaq was in there.
Hold on, don't give it away.
Let me see.
This is an unseen,
I've never,
I don't know where it is.
If you could get this, God bless.
Wait, so you just walked into the audition with them?
Nah, you know, like I know.
It's all friends of friends of friends.
So I've done several auditions where it was just like, what am I doing here?
When I auditioned for the Irishman, I couldn't even see the paper.
I asked a 70-year-old woman for her glasses.
Action. Hold on. Dog, do you have the paper. I asked the 70-year-old woman for her glasses.
Do you have the fucking audition footage from Uncut Gems?
Find it, please, for God's
sakes. We need to see that.
It was the worst shit ever.
I need it immediately.
We have to put it out.
We gotta put it out there? Come on, please.
Let me ask Jen, because she's a casting writer.
She definitely has somewhere.
She was mean also.
She wasn't nice to me at all, because I was a little late.
It's not a lie.
I was stoned also.
If you can get past her, then you get to me.
That's why, obviously, she wasn't feeling me.
Obviously.
Get us that audition, Benny, please.
I got to find it.
What are you guys doing right now?
I was filming a pod right now, and he said he brought up, he goes, I was like, yeah,
you have all these awkward moments in the vlogs that are beautiful because that's what
life is.
Life is awkward sometimes.
He goes, man, if y'all saw how I bombed my Uncut Gems audition.
Every audition I've ever been on was a bomb.
Somehow they gave me two.
I don't know.
What the fuck?
They must have liked me.
Anyway, I'll hit you after.
Peace.
Peace.
Yo, how was the Irishman?
That was crazy.
That was the easiest shit I've ever done in my life.
They just gave it to you?
He just gave it to me.
Because he's a fan or?
I don't fucking know.
Did you talk to Marty at all?
Yeah, of course.
And?
He was just, I don't know, he was enamored with me for some reason.
Like, he just found me very interesting.
You know, like, you always meet these guys that are real high up.
Yeah.
I come in the room and I'm like, fucking, they're very interested with me.
Like, Bono.
When I was at a dinner with Bono and I think his South African whatever
was there, this woman,
she was very interested in me, which
made him even more interested in me.
In what way?
I don't know.
As far as wanting to know what I do,
what am I doing here?
All these things.
What are my dreams?
And where do you think that's from?
That sounded like a potential freak-off situation.
Everything is a potential freak-off situation.
Well, it's like, I don't know.
Go, go.
Insecurities.
Oh, exactly.
So his surety is kind of really pressing you.
Yeah, maybe.
I don't know.
It just seems like, who's this guy?
This fucking weirdo-looking guy is an interesting character. I don't know. What just seemed like, who's this guy? This fucking weirdo-looking guy's interesting character?
I don't know.
What I find interesting about you, and I want to ask you about this, you seem completely secure, confident.
You pursue your passions.
That's it.
And I think that's something people are drawn to.
And then I wanted to ask you, is that something you felt like you've always had?
Or were there a couple of seminal moments where you're like, yeah, I don't want to chase this thing.
I don't want to be insecure about this thing.
And then you just let it go. Yeah, I never want to feel like, yeah, I don't want to chase this thing. I don't want to be insecure about this thing. And then you just let it go.
Yeah, I never want to feel insecure, period.
I don't want to feel rejection.
I guess that's also a thing.
That's also one of those, like, that's an insecurity, not wanting to feel that type of thing.
So that's maybe why I keep to myself and only satisfy myself.
Because I know and I've realized you can't satisfy everybody.
And if you try, you're
going to miserably fail.
There's only really one person that needs
to be satisfied with what they're
doing and that's me. I'm the motherfucking
one doing it. I'm wasting my time.
So I feel like I have to,
it has to touch me in a way.
It's brutal when you
do something that is
not authentic to you to impress somebody else and they reject it.
Oh, you feel nauseous because you know you shouldn't have did it anyway.
You rejected yourself.
Now they reject you.
I've done it.
I've felt it before.
What happened?
I knew you were going to ask for a pinpointing shit, but it's not.
When you asked me, I don't fucking remember that quick.
Fuck.
Entertainment-wise, private life.
So many things. So many life. So many things.
So many things.
So many things.
I knew I should have
fucking put myself out there.
Or even like
reaching out to somebody
and they like leave you on read
or some shit, you know?
Something that simple.
And it's like you didn't even
want to fuck with them
in the first place.
I'm doing it just because
I felt like I needed to
for a look. Yeah. I'm like, bro, I don't fucking need this goddamn look i'm doing you a favor
by hitting you up yeah what are we doing yeah but i've i've always had this this confidence in
myself where i felt like i knew i was mad judgmental about shit but on the low you know
like no i don't fuck with that. I like this.
I know what I like.
That's the thing.
Sometimes people look at that
as like the judgmental side
is insecurity.
I don't think it's insecurity
if you know what you like.
There's a difference
between just being a hater
because you think you suck.
Definitely not a hater.
Exactly.
But because you'll give it up
if you think someone's
being authentic.
All day.
And that's the other thing.
I love everybody's shit.
I love to give props.
Especially if you're nice.
If you're nice, I just want to scream your fucking name and your talent to the rooftop.
But if it's whack, I can't just say it's nice because you're nice.
I know.
Yeah.
It's a tough situation sometimes because there's a lot of people I like that I don't love their work.
It's just, it is what it is.
What do you say when they're like, how do you feel about this?
I'd rather they not ask.
Yeah. But if they do, I lie.
Because you don't
want to hurt their feelings?
Because I know I'm
going to be deemed a dick.
By this person that you like? Yeah.
How do you turn down features
that you don't want to do? I don't do anything.
I don't do anything. I don't do anything.
I save a ridiculous amount of money.
Yo.
I charge an unbelievable amount of money.
Yeah.
And if you want to pay that, then I'll do it.
If not, if you're hitting me up out of the blue and we don't know each other and you're asking me for a feature.
There's no way.
Come on.
This is business.
Bro, that's so.
You made a business by doing that.
I just, you can't.
I would never do that.
I would never do that. I would never do that.
That's my ethics.
I couldn't imagine someone...
Some people are shameless, bro.
Some people don't care.
They don't even care if you reject it.
They have one goal.
What if it's one of those artists that you know of,
but you don't really respect their art?
So it's like you have a relationship with them,
and then they ask you for a feature.
I've done it.
You still just tell them a crazy price?
I've done it.
Or you did the feature? I've done it. You do the feature. Oh, okay, you'll do the feature. I've a feature. I've done it. You still just tell them a crazy price? I've done it. Or you did the feature? I've done it.
You do the feature. I've done it.
I've done it. But that's why I don't do
things anymore because I'm like, you know what?
If I don't truly like it, I'd just
rather not. I'm going to mail it in. I don't want to mail
anything in.
And even, I'll mail
it in and they'll be like, yo, that's the craziest
shit I've ever heard in my life. Thank you so much.
Thank you, man. No doubt.
What's the dream feature right now?
Alive.
The dream.
Alive.
I don't know.
Drake. Really?
I would love to fucking rap with all these
fucking top guys.
I only rap with the best guys that I think are the best anyway.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's start getting to the real best.
Who do you think is the best right now, Drake?
Who else?
I don't think Drake is the best, but he's the best ever as far as business and being.
Yeah.
I mean, he's amazing.
Yeah.
It's amazing what this man has done.
Longevity is crazy.
I just recently did a little photo shoot for them with the Jets. It's amazing what this man has done. Longevity's crazy.
That's peculiar to me.
I just recently did a little photo shoot for them with the Jets.
Oh, really?
Yeah, so nice.
Put a little leather jacket on with the owl.
I don't really do shit like that either, but I figured I'd give it a shot.
Yeah.
Now, having you guys rap on a song would be fire.
What about outside of rap?
What about, is there a band?
Ooh, that'd be,
I mean, that would go crazy. Yeah, that's my first thought.
How is that not happened?
Listen,
she's on another
fucking hemisphere.
She's on another planet,
that woman.
Yeah.
That's my sister,
but she's on another
fucking hemisphere,
you know, like.
I mean, she is.
She's interviewing Tim Cook.
I don't even know
who that is.
Apple.
Oh. She fucking said, like, Adam Silver. I's interviewing Tim Cook. I don't even know who that is. Apple. Oh.
You should fucking send, like, Adam Silver.
I would have known who it was.
Like, fucking Paul Tagliabue.
Then I'd be impressed.
What?
I need a good deal, huh?
Paul Tagliabue.
Fuck a deal.
Where is Adam Silver from?
Like, what planet?
I don't know, but I'll tell you this.
Why is he so cute?
He gives a real good hip-hop handshake? No way
Oh, yeah when he goes in strong
Daps you up and everything but like with flavor. Mmm, you know like with flavor. I mean he has sass on
He has a little he know he has some sass on when I met him at the garden
He's around enough
Trust me, Adam Salver, guys. Don't do that.
He's around enough.
There's a lot of dudes that are around that don't know how to do the smooth.
It's the closure here.
Sometimes it's sideways.
It needs to be a full-on rub.
That's one of those things that annoys me so much.
I just don't say it.
Disclosure like that?
Come on.
It's got to be there.
Did you go in for it with him?
You set the tone or he went
in for it with you set the tone crazy like what up no like what up like that i knew already he
was about to go down and we're gonna no way
what you think about these new courts bro His eyes. He said it to me with his eyes.
Bro, Adam.
What you think about these new courts, bro?
I didn't like it.
I lied about it and said I was all right.
I didn't like it.
It's ass.
Bro, the new courts are ass. I didn't like that shit at all.
I hate shit like that.
It's tough to see the garden in anything other than that linoleum hardwood, you know?
Yeah.
But change is always good, too.
But it got to be good.
Like, why are you doing some trash?
Who okayed that design?
And I'd like to be involved in that decision the next time.
Yeah, dude, would they bring someone like you in for a consultation?
I don't know, man.
Like, once again, people like to put thumbs on things.
I fucking put your thumb in your ass.
I could do it all.
Yeah.
My only thing is, like, you're not going to wiggle.
No, damn.
So what happens when you sit with Adam Silver and you're like,
there's got to be a dinosaur on every court?
He'll listen.
If I'm coming, if I presented to him, he'd know.
Yeah, yeah.
He's going to listen.
Trust me.
That was hard.
That was the hard eye.
Wait a minute.
Are you nice in the room
when it comes to the presentation
of an idea?
Do you go for it?
Yeah, I go for it.
I speak with passion.
If I'm in the room,
I'm not going to let
that opportunity slip.
It's guaranteed.
I don't know if it's guaranteed, but I'm definitely going to do what I have to do.
And if you're not feeling it, then I'll just have to live with it.
Then I'll fucking have to go back to the drawing board.
Yeah.
Have you watched people flip?
Wait a minute.
Wait, what?
I'm just going straight.
Oh, yeah.
Like you see them wiggling into my arms?
Sometimes.
Sometimes if they're really good, you can't read them.
What about earlier in music career?
Have you been in front of audiences that you've seen flip?
100%.
Because you go out there, they don't know who you are.
Throw a 70-inch TV out there, people suddenly like you.
They already liked me by then.
I was just showing love at that.
I was saying thank you.
By that time, I was thanking them for loving me.
But early on, you know, of course.
When you're opening for people or something.
You know, I didn't do a lot of that.
I didn't do a lot of that because in the era I came up in,
there was enough time, there was enough space to do your own little show
where you could do 500 people alone.
Just have, you know. Just build off that.
500,000,
2,000, 3,000, 5,000,
fucking 50,000 people.
Tell me about the flip. That's what
I'm interested in with music.
You come out there, you look
the way you do,
you fucking wrap your goddamn ass
off and by the second, third song
they're cheering for you.
You feel it.
Oh, yeah.
You can see it in their eyes.
They're like, I-
I look in their eyes.
I'm fucking looking in each person's eyes.
There was only 20 people in the room, so I'm fucking looking at you.
And they went from, oh, shit, where am I at, to, oh, God, this guy is going to blow the fuck up.
I don't know if they thought that, but they definitely were going to follow me after that. They became fans.
Huh.
Yeah, that's real.
You just need a chance. You know, sometimes
you just have to meet somebody
or see what they
have to offer, and then you can change
your mind about them. Do we have some locks
for this week? Oh, baby, I got
them. Let me get the exact yardage up.
Raheem Mostert, I think, is going to get more than
49.5 rushing yards. The Dolphins
are a great running team. I trust he can get that.
DJ Moore, less than
62.5 receiving
yards. He's going up against the Browns defense. I just
think their pass rush is so good. It's going to affect
Justin Fields and Jordan Love. The Packers
are on a heater. More than 1.5
passing touchdowns. Those are the
Singlocks, Schultz locks.
And prize picks is going to match 100% of that initial deposit bonus up to $100.
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Okay, but what does that mean?
That means that if you put in 100, they're also giving you 100.
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Now you're going to watch a damn playoff game?
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Let's get back to the show.
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Now let's get back to the show.
What happened to Vice?
Fuck if I know, man. Those guys,
they had a beautiful thing going, but I don't
really know the whole backstory
behind shit. All I know is that
I had fucking carte blanche to do whatever.
And I was doing whatever.
I feel like that's when it, like now it's like.
That's when it was fun.
That's when it was fun.
But I don't know if I was the fucking, I don't know if I was the reasoning shit went down.
Probably not.
Now I feel like it got bought.
Yeah, it feels a lot more corporate.
Like they sold to this thing and then all of a sudden.
I think it was a bull I think they pulled a
fucking gag I think they did some weird
shit I think that was actually that's
what happened
they were trying to
position themselves to get into some bidding
war some dumb shit and it
ended up falling through
and they ended up getting nothing
oh so they didn't get bought
but I believe they got bought for a much lesser amount than it was initially.
I know they had like a billion dollar valuation or something crazy back in like 08 or 09.
Three or something like that or something more than that.
Yeah, that's why.
I mean, it was just dominating culture.
Like this one brand was dominating.
That's why I didn't sign with a regular label.
I signed with Vice.
It wasn't
tremendous money, but everything that came
from that is
more than money.
Much more than money.
I made phenomenal content for fucking six years.
Yeah.
It lives to this day.
Coming on the 10-year anniversary of
Fuck That's Delicious.
I fucking have had a show for 10 years.
Yeah, it's a long time.
Five years on TV.
Five years on the internet.
Is it wild to see
like, is it wild to see
trends that you
might have greatly influenced
become very popular?
Like, for example, just food content in and of itself online.
Now, there are other people that also did food content.
But to see the popularity of that now.
Yeah.
I mean, in our age group, you could directly correlate that to me.
Yeah.
In our age group, you know, definitely I was influenced by.
I think it's you, it's Bourdain.
But that's what I'm saying.
We were influenced by them.
Bourdain and Andrew Zimmerman
and all these other guys
were the predecessors of us.
They were our forefathers.
I came after,
and this new wave came after me.
I feel like the new wave
is not anything that Bourdain
would have been happy with.
Why is that?
Not as thoughtful.
Because it's not thoughtful. These are not thoughtful
things at all. He's made comments
before that he only liked to watch me
and a couple of other things.
That's why I don't
do run-of-the-mill
shit. That's why it doesn't always
go viral and it's not like these
TikTok-y food videos that do thoughtful
pieces on real people,
real institutions, real families, real people, real institutions,
real families,
real chefs,
real this,
real,
it's all,
it's all thoughtful pieces.
These are not
regurgitated and fucking
like you're going here,
I'm going here,
I'm going to this fucking place.
It's bullshit.
It's bullshit.
You're going to this place
for the first time,
sure,
you're standing on a street
in Queens,
you're just going to
a bunch of places.
This guy has a fucking great bagel
this has a great bagel suck my dick
I don't care
have you seen Leave the Meter running that show
it's actually a TikTok show that's around
this topic that I think actually does a good job
where the dude gets into an Uber or a taxi
with someone and he'll basically be like
hey where's your favorite restaurant in the city
what's a food you feel like represents your culture
then he goes with them to the restaurant
and then he talks with them about where they grew up,
where they came from, how the food impacts the culture,
and then pays them for the whole rate
that the meter was running.
It's a really cool show.
I love that.
Now I think it's getting scaled to TV. It came from TikTok, though.
It's named Kareem Rama.
I feel like a lot of people are creating around things
they like and not what they love.
When you create around something that you love, it's hard to fail yourself.
You know what I mean?
Like if you – imagine like doing a documentary on your mom.
Like are you going to make a shitty documentary about your mom?
Yeah, it's like – so it's like – and I feel like a lot of people are just like, hey, I like eating.
Okay, I'll do that.
I like going out. Okay, I'll create content around it.
It's because anything that they see
is popular at the moment, they're going to try.
They're giving it a go.
There are young guys doing it good.
Even Keith Lee, I love the way he looks.
Okay,
coming from fucking...
Keith Lee is not
a normal example.
That isn't an abnormal example of someone that popped off.
That's not a typical thing.
You know, people do that all the time,
sitting in their car fucking talking about some shit.
It doesn't pop off like Keith Lee.
I think the common thread.
You know what I mean?
If you don't do that, it's gone.
You gotta do that shit.
The common thread both of y'all have, I think, is authenticity.
When I watch your shit and his shit, I trust you.
I'm like, oh, this guy is not, it's just him doing him.
That's what I'm saying.
He's in it for the real.
He wants to tell you how he really feels.
He's not going to sugarcoat it.
That's it.
His brother was an amazing fighter.
He was a fighter, too.
I know.
He was a good fighter.
His brother was an amazing fighter. Sure. Yeah was a fighter too. I know, he was a good fighter. Yeah. His brother was an amazing fighter.
Sure.
Yeah, it's weird.
Why are people not more,
I guess you're aware of your passions.
I wonder if people just listen to their passions
that they might execute better on them.
It's weird.
I'm allergic to doing anything that I don't enjoy in life.
I fucking hate it, but I can work allergic to doing anything that I don't enjoy in life. Like, I fucking hate it.
But I can work endlessly on the things that I really love.
It doesn't even feel like work.
Get lost in it.
Yeah, it's phenomenal.
I get lost in it.
I could get lost just sitting there writing my name a hundred fucking times, like graffiti, just writing back a million times in 20 different ways.
You know, just doodling.
I love to paint.
I just need things
to get lost in. I need
visual stimulation,
oratory stimulation,
oral stimulation,
all that. What was your tag when you
were graffiti? Skunt.
What is
skunt? It's a
Guyanese word that you
call somebody. It's a bad thing that's and then i
wrote action oh starting in 04 are any of your tags still up do you uh there's there's some
things here and there you gotta look close yeah we'll go outside right now and catch some tags
no way if you want you got some paint let's. Yeah, that early graffiti scene is very interesting.
Did you ever have iconic tags
that you really wanted, like spots you really wanted
to lock up?
Yeah, the Hell's Gate Bridge.
You know that bridge? When you're driving on the
fucking, going to the Bronx,
you're getting on the
Triborough Bridge, you look to the right
and those train tracks on the
right side, you know them? And then there's these big
pillars within.
It's like you need to wear a harness.
Oh, this is... Yeah, but I wasn't gonna
fucking do all that, but that's something I always wanted.
I want to have a tag on every
single street in movies.
You know, like Rocky.
Oh, shit. If you...
A famous graffiti writer's
father made Rocky. So this graffiti writer's tags
were all in every fucking part of the movie that's fine like i love looking at shit like that i love
catching something like that reading the street did you ever tag that area in um long island city
now they tore it down but oh yeah it's like iconic. Five points? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
That used to be called
the scrapyard.
Oh, no, wait.
That used to be called
something else.
It wasn't called Five Points.
Fucking some other shit.
I just knew it was
Long Island City
before it was Long Island City.
But that's where I found, man.
That used to be
a fucking raw spot. Yeah. I forgot the name of it was Long Island City. But that's where I found, man, that used to be a fucking raw spot.
Forgot the name of it before that, damn.
What happened to Hunts Point?
Got cleaned up real good.
Did they really? Yeah, got cleaned up real good.
Yeah, only fans.
That's what happened to Hunts Point.
It's not the same, man. Hunts Point
was like, I feel like Hunts
Point was, that was the runway.
Yeah.
That was the fashion show.
Yeah.
Bro, it was.
Did you ever see it at its height?
Yeah.
Yeah?
I mean, they had that HBO show about it.
Come on, man.
It's one of my favorite shows.
Hooker's at the point.
I met one of the dudes.
Which one?
Do you remember the episode where the dude's rubber breaks?
Oh, my God.
Of course.
You met him?
Bro, his boy is a comedian named Brooklyn Mike.
He was fucking Cindy.
You know the girl.
Cindy the crazy.
Girl, I'm sucking dick.
I can't.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's a legendary clip.
It's an unbelievable moment.
That's a legend.
First of all, HBO, America Undercover,
all gangbanging
and Little Rock fucking,
all that shit
was the best.
Crazy.
HBO.
It was the best.
Growing up,
that was the shit.
It was like,
it was Vice before Vice
you could even say.
Yeah.
Oh, it was way before.
Fucking Taxi Cab Confessions.
Taxi Cab Confessions was crazy.
But there was that one
about jail.
There was this famous clip
about tossing salad.
Learned about tossing salad in 91.
From this fucking dude in jail talking about,
yeah, if I like you, you eat my ass with jelly or without it.
Yeah, the schmuckers jelly.
If I fucking eat my ass with schmuckers jelly.
I mean, you might as well eat it with.
You know it. It's like a cheesesteak. You. I mean, you might as well eat it with. You know it.
It's like a cheesesteak.
You want it with or without.
You always want it with.
Bro, that Hunts Point shit was so crazy.
Where is Hunts Point?
Bronx.
It's in the Bronx, but it was this, I guess, legendary spot where if you had a car, you could go pick up a street walking hooker.
And you go get hit or you fuck this girl in your car.
But this dude was like- You didn't even need a car. He was playing. You can do walk-ups. He was the hooker. And like, you go get ahead or you fuck this girl in your car. But this dude was like,
You didn't even need a car.
You can do walk-ups.
He was the walker.
Like, he was just a walker.
No car.
And the girl was like,
I usually don't fuck guys
without a car.
And he was like,
come on, you can fuck me.
And he was kind of like
risen her a little bit.
And he starts to smash
and then the rubber breaks.
And it's like,
and HBO just leaves it at that.
And then I bumped into this motherfucker, bro.
Hopefully you didn't bump him.
Thank God.
Hopefully you didn't bump him.
I think he was all right.
Yeah, yeah.
But I couldn't believe,
I was like seeing a superstar.
He was like,
I can't compare.
I was like looking at Thanos.
You were nervous?
Your hands were shaking?
I was.
I'm bugged out right now.
I'm like, damn, I'm jealous.
Bro.
It's so funny.
I've met a lot of people, but this is one man I'd love to meet.
Yo, it was an iconic moment.
I was so young.
I went there almost like when you go the holidays and you look at the houses that are lit up.
Like, I went just as a voyeur.
Just to look and see it.
Yeah, because it's like you see the shit on HBO and it's like,
I got to see this shit in person.
I was way too afraid
to talk to anybody
or get out of the car.
They'll come right up to you.
Yeah, they're aggressive.
Did HBO blow up the spot?
Like, was everyone
going there afterwards?
Like, did those girls
stick around the corner?
Shit, remember the girl
that dressed as a nurse
that had no top teeth?
Was HBO Keith Lee for hookers?
Cindy.
Yeah, exactly.
Nah, then Cindy's different then.
Cindy was the one with the schnoz. She was like Italian. She talked real crazy. That's Cindy? Cindy. Then Cindy's different then. Cindy was the one with the schnoz.
She was like Italian.
She talked real crazy.
That's Cindy.
Cindy.
This other girl wasn't Cindy.
This other girl was a black girl
or Latino girl.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right.
She was the one
who was like,
girl, suck a dick.
Girl, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that one.
I don't know.
I got to go piss.
Go, go, go.
But I was like,
the show was making
politicians look bad
because they're like,
yo, you're just
letting this happen.
You're not doing anything about it.
Oh, so they got political pushback.
Yeah, so then they cleaned it up.
I mean, 42nd Street used to be like that too.
42nd was crazy.
Yo, you know what?
The Upper East Side on like third half
or something crazy,
I remember late at night,
they just unleashed the hookers
on the Upper East Side.
Flushing also on the back blocks,
Farrington by Main Street.
Bad news bears.
Back pages. Good old days.
I mean, it's wild how much...
The Village Voice.
Remember the Village Voice?
The Village Voice is this newspaper.
It's like looking at the movies.
You want to see fucking Scream?
You just look in the back and you find who you need.
This is before Craigslist or whatever, where you could, the Village Voice was the thing.
And yeah, they printed out of like Cooper Square in the East Village.
I had a feature in there.
Really?
Yeah.
The Village Voice.
And there was some good fucking back pages there too, so I'm proud that I was in that issue.
Yeah, man.
Yeah, it's wild.
Old New York is just such a different world.
Bro, when I was hitting you before talking about public access, it's so funny how New York, and I'm sure most cities maybe had this, but there was these public access networks where anybody could get a TV show.
And it was on, I guess if you had regular cable, you could do it.
I remember the channels.
It was 34 and 35 in Queens.
35 was Robin Byrd.
Yeah, exactly.
34 and 35.
They had the Jamaican fuck fucking fest.
It was like a fucking dance fuck party.
It was like MTV The Grind, but Jamaican, and they were fucking.
I was Jewish Task Force,
JTF, dude with the
glasses and the fucking big hat
screaming at the top of his lungs.
And then they had the Spickin' Spanish.
Oh my God, man.
So many good things.
You could say that was the name of the show.
Spick and Spam was the cleaning thing.
So they had Spickin' Spanish and then they had the Black Israelites podcast.
So podcasting and live streaming, what is popular right now, existed with public actors.
You could call in in real time and just start arguing with the people you were watching on TV.
And they would tell you to be like, can you turn down your TV because it's coming through the phone?
No.
Yeah.
Oh, that's so funny.
And it was an insane time.
Robin Bird, who was this like, she was like an iconic, I guess, porn lady, but she was old.
And kind of weathered, but she brought on like porn stars and they would like, fuck.
There was no rules.
No, like public access was one of those things.
It was like YouTube.
You could just upload your own shit. It was Wayne's World. Yes, like, public access was one of those things. It was like YouTube. You could just upload your own shit.
It was Wayne's World.
It was Wayne's World.
What was Jewish Task Force? What was that show?
It was this one fucking dude, this
freak, wilding out about
everything Jew shit.
You were just talking about Jewish news?
Yes, yes.
Israel. This was the late 90s.
Early 90s, late 90s into the 2000s.
So whatever the fuck was going on.
Yeah, and he was commenting on it.
He was fucking freaking out.
Yeah.
Just a little crack up.
Nah, public action.
That was comedy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, that's fire.
Yeah, just call in and rile them up.
Dude, the black Israelites were the best. In the street, they're the best. You call in and rile them up Dude the black Israelites were the best
In the street they're the best
You could really fucking rile them up
I feel like they don't even
They're not even out like they used to be
You gotta go to 125th
I gotta go way uptown
Yeah you gotta go to Harlem
They used to be in the white areas
Yeah
There used to be a nice little dialogue
In front of Whole Foods on 14th
I have not seen that one
Bro they rope in these white girls
And it'd be so funny
Like you could just watch them
Cause you know it's about to go down
And the white girls would like
Start to fall for it
Well that's not right
And I'm like well once they got her hooked
It's over
Just like when you stand there
And you see dudes really arguing with them
Like yo where are you from
You fucking stupid
Got nothing to do with it
Fucking stupid right now man
We're in front of Popeye's on 125th,
and you're arguing with these guys?
What are we doing?
Two of my roommates from college became Hebrew Israelites.
They were in Dallas.
They were going out there in downtown,
yelling about white people or whatever.
It was the craziest thing.
Also, they only fucked white girls,
so it was so funny to watch.
I remember one time I was with a white chick.
I was like, yo, we got to cross the street.
You were about to get the heat.
You didn't want the fucking smoke.
Put your hoodie up.
Put your hoodie up.
All right, action.
They would have saluted you, honestly.
No.
No, no, no.
They would not say that.
Sell out.
But they would have said shit about her.
And I would have been like, damn, I got to pop off.
And it was deep, too.
He wasn't popping off.
I just have a really quick question.
What was it like touring with Eminem in Australia with all the rest of those guys?
I was fucking bugged out.
Insane, right?
It was insane.
It was me, Kendrick, J. Cole, and Eminem.
Holy crazy.
And this was like before everyone really popped off like that.
I didn't even have an album out, but I had the same manager, Paul Rosenberg, as Em.
So they brought me along.
I performed in front of 35,000 people in South Africa with him.
55,000 in Johannesburg.
35,000 in Cape Town.
Wow.
What do you learn performing for something that big,
like that you didn't know before?
You need fucking, you need all kinds of doodads on the stage.
You need fire.
You need pyrotechnics to take it because it's just you standing there. Yeah. You need a little bit more. You need to fill the stage. You need fire. You need pyrotechnics to take it because it's just you standing there.
You need a little bit more.
You need to fill the room. You need music.
I had one goddamn DJ up there
with music that wasn't mixed.
It was a shit show.
But it was fun. Did you get to hang with
the guys? Yeah, of course.
And so just like tour bus shit?
Nah, it wasn't really tour bus shit.
This was more like everyone had their own space,
but at the venues you'd see everybody.
Yeah, and what were the convos like backstage
with Kendrick and those guys?
These guys are very normal guys, you know what I'm saying?
Like, I can't really pinpoint conversations.
Everyone just talks shit.
Yeah.
I remember when I first met Em,
it was in Leeds,
in Reading and Leeds Festival.
You know, you have to be summoned to meet him.
So he asked for me. They brought
me. He was standing,
you know, I walk in. There's like three
guys standing in a circle. His back is to
me. He
turns his head slightly.
The fucking shine of the light just tickles his cheek.
All you see is a side profile.
I thought he was going to make a full turn.
He just went back that way.
And then I went and said, what's up?
And it was just normal.
And he made me a plate.
Fixed me a plate of food.
What's on a plate?
Some bullshit.
Some string beans.
English food.
Yeah, like some roast. Whatever was back there. How's on a plate? Some bullshit, some string beans, some English food. Yeah, like some
roast, whatever was back there.
How's the dap?
Strong dap.
Strong dap.
But this wasn't a foot.
It's this.
Hug.
The slap hug. But the slap
was strong. It was a connection.
And then the hug was even stronger.
Gable grip.
Fanning your work?
I would say.
Yeah.
I would say.
I mean, that's why you're there, right?
I would say so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, before you leave, we have something for you.
I know you've been trying to be a skinny, shredded motherfucker.
Yeah, right.
What the fuck?
We have an omakase for you.
Oh, shit. But it is a chocolate chip an omakase for you. Oh, shit.
But it is a chocolate chip cookie omakase.
Oh, my God.
Okay.
Okay.
You all knew about this?
Of course.
Motherfuckers.
Now, listen.
We have what we think might be seven of the best chocolate chip cookies.
Wow.
Okay.
One or two had to be made.
One is Milton Abel Jr.'s chocolate chip cookie.
This has been...
Bless that man.
This has been made.
Milton Abel Jr. is a fucking tremendous man.
Tell us, tell us.
I mean, Milton Abel Jr. is one of the best bakers I've ever met.
Met him in Copenhagen.
And, you know, he used to work at the French Laundry.
He worked...
Yeah, of course.
And over here, in Copenhagen, he worked at Noma.
He worked at a bunch of different places.
Noma is the number one restaurant in the world or whatever?
Right now, yeah.
Yeah.
And he worked at a bunch of different places,
but he opened a spot over there,
and the man just is magical with the baking.
Okay.
We're going to do one of each.
Also, what is your choice of milk?
We have all of the milk. Skim.
Cold.
Well, cold, yeah.
And then let's do
one of each cookie and then we can all...
Yeah, I think so.
You know why you do cold skim?
Because the cream affects the cookie.
If you do a whole milk,
the creaminess of the milk could make the cookie better.
So you don't get a true taste.
You don't get a true taste of the cookie.
What we're doing is we're still getting some lactic,
cold, but the full taste of the cookie.
That's interesting.
And also, you know, I don't really need to dunk.
It's more of a wash with the milk.
Yeah.
It's a milk wash.
I agree with that. Do you think that is the best pairing for the chocolate chip cookie? I don't really need to dunk. It's more of a wash with the milk. Yeah. It's a milk wash.
I agree with that.
Do you think that is the best pairing for the chocolate chip cookie?
Yeah.
Or is this just a cultural thing that we just have agreed to?
Chai is good.
Wow. Chai is good, yeah.
Chai with biscuits will do.
That's what I'm saying.
Chai and chocolate cookies or coffee and chocolate chip cookies are really good.
Yeah.
cookies or coffee and chocolate chip cookies really good.
The reason I knew you were hanging
with Russ is because
I went to go get a cookie from
a place and the guy
who's the chef there,
he had worked on
some stuff with Russ.
And he's like, yeah, I think they're cooking today.
Bro, I'm
going to invite you guys to the pop-up.
Crazy? It's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous stuff.
But he makes a good fucking cookie.
The butterscotch.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He sent them over here.
I didn't realize that you had made that.
Now it all makes sense.
Yeah.
Do you enjoy the process of being in a proper kitchen?
Or do you like being dolo working on your own shit?
No, I like being in a proper kitchen also.
I like all that shit. The energy. because i like i don't know it all i need to be
with people that are better than me and have more experience that's why i only like to be around
high level shit because how would i get better yeah if i'm around fucking mediocrity but you
enjoy the intensity of oh hell yeah i love into i love all that shit. I like pressure.
I like balls to the wall.
Yeah.
And do you like the, I guess, systems of running an entire restaurant?
Or do you want to only focus on the kitchen?
You have to be conscious of it all, bro.
That's where that money, the money's in the bar, the money's in the minutia, in the little details things. The food usually, the bar is what dictates the ability of the kitchen to do what they want.
If you're making real money at the bar, you could get the good ingredients.
You can do whatever the fuck you want.
It's all a show.
Where's your restaurant?
I'm working, man.
I'm working on it right now.
There's some things in the works.
Like, yeah, I don't like to put it out in the air until it's real.
What are some restaurant red flags?
If you sit down at a restaurant and you see
something, how do you know it's going to be not as good as
people tell you?
Fuck, man.
I don't, you know, I really don't like to, like,
I don't like to shit on places,
so I don't want to give that up. I just
know. You just know.
Alright, what if the... Who the fuck is telling you it's good
is usually a telltale sign
of whether it's going to be good or not.
What do you mean by that?
Who that info is coming from.
Like, yo, if I know your palate's garbage
and you're telling me this is great,
oh, man.
Do you think Michelin star restaurants
are sometimes overhyped?
Of course.
Yeah.
Of course.
But I think that they're looking for things that are new and inventive.
And it's like, it's just like music.
It's a lot of shit that just keeps getting redone in movies.
So when someone does something new and fresh and crazy, give them the fucking star.
Yeah.
Why not?
Why do you think they're a little too traditional about it?
I don't really know what they look for.
I believe that it's...
They look for Japanese, Italian, and French.
Yeah, there it is.
It's usually some fucking snooty bullshit.
That's why.
It's a goddamn tire company, for fuck's sake.
That's my whole thing.
The history of it is...
You know, it's not Michelin.
It's fucking Michelin tire from Michigan or wherever the fuck.
Toledo.
I don't know about food.
We're going to do our own.
I went to a Michelin star at an Indian restaurant.
Which one?
I have not found good Indian food in the city.
If you know spots, I would love to know them.
The maca is good.
I heard the maca is good.
Tamarind.
Got to go to Queens.
There's no rest.
You're in Queens? We go to Edison. No. We go. My wife and I go to Queens. There's no rest. You're in Queens?
We go to Edison. No.
My wife and I go to Edison.
Just as good as Jackson Heights.
Just as good.
But you gotta go to the places that don't have these big names.
No big restaurants. You're gonna be happy.
You gotta go to Holden Wall.
Gotta go to a fucking place with a steam table.
Will you give a restaurant extra credit for being able to serve more people at the same quality?
In other words, like a hundred...
That's not easy.
That's what I'm saying.
That's not easy.
Consistency and level at that.
Yeah, but I also talked to a chef who said that he fucking...
That's actually like trash.
What you mean?
To be able to just do the same thing over and over again, the same
every day, it's kind of sad
also. Break that down.
I saw that on one of your vlogs.
That dude has the
noma and then
table, which is this dude Bruno Verjoux.
He just became a chef
at 52 or 56.
He was a food critic before that.
He makes different food every day.
It's always dependent on what's the freshest from the farm.
And then that dictates his menu.
He thinks that it's sad to have brilliant young creatives doing the same thing every day.
The restriction.
The restriction.
There's a removal of the artistry.
You lose.
It's like you lose language.
You lose the ability to express yourself.
I agree with that artistically.
You just want to be able to flow and do whatever.
But the difficulty required in recreating something
to satisfy me the second, third, and fifth time.
If I go have a steak at Raul's,
and I tell my friends, hey,
we got to go to Raul's and get the steak,
I want to know that that shit is going to taste like the last
time I went because I just put my name on it.
For sure. At this point
with Luger's, Luger's is
phenomenal, but I judge it like, oh, tonight
was a really good night.
Tonight was a good one at Luger's.
Sometimes you...
It's just so...
It's not as good as the last time.
But sometimes it's fucking
unheard of and you can't even judge it.
Even with Luger's, I remember
Luger's getting all that shit.
And it's like, yo...
Because that fucking guy is a cocksucker. All he wants to do
is talk shit anyway.
That's the thing. He was up to his fucking... He was like, I. No, it's because that fucking guy is a cocksucker. All he wants to do is talk shit anyway. That's the thing.
He was like,
he was up to his fucking,
he was like,
I'm sick of this shit.
That's on him.
Yeah.
That's it.
I feel him though.
What he's looking for
is some new inventive shit.
Yeah.
But don't go to Luger's.
Don't go there for that.
Exactly.
You know you're not getting that there.
This is traditional steakhouse.
Like dudes are going there
after work
in their work attire
and now all of a sudden people are coming from China and making it this whole big dinner thing The traditional steakhouse, like dudes are going there after work in their work attire.
And now all of a sudden people are coming from China and making it this whole big dinner thing.
And it's like, dude, this is.
I was there on Thanksgiving.
Yeah.
It was only Asian people in there.
It was literally only Asian people in there and us.
Yeah.
I've never seen that before. But that's what's happening now.
So the expectation is like, you're going to go to this exquisite fine dining.
It's like, no, you're going to get a great cut and you're going to
hang with your boys and you're going to have like a
decent cocktail.
For me, I don't really give it. I like an old
school bartender that fucking makes
a shitty drink.
I don't want a guy
fucking shaking it and it's all delicious.
I don't want it to be delicious.
I want it to be rough. Like, yeah. I want it to be rough,
like hard,
like what is this?
Yeah.
They're all Albanian in there.
Every fucking waiter
is old school Albanian, Bosnian.
Wolfgang's too,
they're all Balkan.
Bro, they're all...
Those jobs are passed on
from generation to generation.
Yeah.
Just off of me,
I could only imagine
what he made in a tip
just from my table.
Those dudes put motherfucking kids through college.
Oh, yeah.
Fucking swim team, golf team, whatever you want as a waiter at fucking Luger's.
Yeah.
That's a career.
That is a top tier professional when you're a waiter at Luger's.
And you're making cash, bro.
I'm so surprised, though.
So much cash. You went to Peter Luger's? Yeah. I would think that's a day you're going to chef Luger's. And you're making cash, bro. I'm so surprised, though. So much cash. Thanksgiving, you went to Peter Luger's?
Yeah.
I would think that's a day you're going to chef it up and do your thing.
No, I don't really give a shit about things like that, man.
That's a fucking, I don't celebrate genocide.
Ah, I got you.
And not only that, it's fucking, you know, I'm not trying to fucking clean.
And I also cook for people, you know, like.
I'm not cleaning thing.
I'm with you but the genocide shit
Come on bro stop ruining a fun day
You know I need a reason
You know I gotta make it dramatic
You gotta make it dramatic
That bothered me
I'm glad you called me out on that
You gotta make it a little bit dramatic
Speaking of dramatic
Here we go
Here we go
Chef Dove
Oh man
This is a weird angle to bring here
You could have brought it over there
It doesn't work in Luger's
Okay
Did you warm them up?
This is fucking silly right here.
Hold on.
This is not warmed up.
This is not warmed up.
They're a little warmed up.
Oh, they are.
They're about 15 seconds warm.
Okay.
And then you have to wait for a set of cookies to be warmed up.
Okay, so.
Oh, please.
Here we go.
All right.
Okay, now.
I believe, just, do you have all, you know everything.
Okay, I believe this is Milton, right?
No?
Other way.
Oh, sorry.
This is Milton.
So, if you want, you can start with Milton.
Do you want to know where each are from, or do you want to kind of be a little surprised?
Let me do a blind.
Okay, go blind.
Let me do a blind.
I wish I didn't tell you about it.
It's all right.
I'll try Milton's last.
I know what Milton's tastes like.
We also, we got the milk for you right there.
Now, that's a sleeper, that one.
If you get this though, if you get this.
I'm having the hardest time not jumping.
Sure, I jump in.
That's good.
For me.
Yeah.
I love the chewiness of that.
Yeah, yeah.
Fantastic.
That reminds me of a. Oh, I know this. Of a cookie that you used to be able to buy in the Bronx, and they would warm it up for you right there in the store.
Do you want to know where it's from?
Let me guess.
Let's let him work.
It's not Mrs. Spunkmeyer.
It's the oldest Spunkmeyer?
Bro, the oldest Spunkmeyer.
Which one is that? That's Subway.
Ah. And you were kind of right
when you said it.
It might be Otis Spunkmeyer.
I think it is. It might be Spunkmeyer.
It is, dog. It is. It's a Spunkmeyer.
Okay. That's fine. Bro, Subway is
Otis Spunkmeyer. Holy shit.
Oh, wow.
Bro, I'm fucking bummed.
Bro, I'm fucking bummed. Hit him with the Adam Silver. Yeah, wow. Bra fucking ball. How was that? Bra fucking ball.
Hit him with the Adam Silver.
Yeah, I did.
Wow.
It was a wink.
That's crazy.
That is crazy, son.
That's crazy.
All right.
He just cracked a code.
Okay.
That's a good crunch.
This one here?
Mm-hmm.
I like that.
It's nice and crunchy, right?
Oh, that one's fucking delicious.
Which one, that fluffy guy?
I tend to like a chocolate chip cookie that doesn't have too many chocolate chips in it.
Bro, I feel that way.
I don't like chocolate chunk.
I like the cookie taste better than I like the chocolate.
You feel me?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't like the chunk when there's too much chocolate.
You want more?
You want extra chocolate in there?
Load it up.
Oh, my God.
Then just eat chocolate,
you know what I mean?
Yeah, that one.
God damn.
That's one with the crunch.
The crunch is stupid, right?
I think I know which one that is.
This one,
the texture is ridiculous.
I think I might know that one.
Is this Levain?
No.
Is that culture?
I'm not sure.
That is culture.
That's culture.
Where's that? Culture
Espresso. Sound like 36th Street
I think. I knew it as Culture 36
back in the day. That's a great cookie. I never knew that.
That's really good. I'm not even eating it. That's
how fat I am. I knew by looking.
That's what I've been trying to do. I've been trying to figure
it out. This is special. A little sea salt.
Sweet and salty.
These look beautiful.
That looks crazy.
The way it just broke apart like artisan.
Now, this is crazy.
It's a Vial of Rona chocolate.
Break it, break it, break it.
Oh, no.
I got you. It's good.
This is crazy.
I had that one already.
This is one people are saying is the cookie.
Right now.
Oh, gee.
Young Milton.
There should be honey butter on there.
We didn't do the honey butter for a reason.
We felt like it was like adding ice cream.
Yeah, it's too much.
Yeah.
Like it cheats it.
It's like an additional thing.
Yeah, that's excellent.
As far as flavor,
Milton's cookie is the best. Wow.
The flavor of the cookie.
Now, my wife made these.
They're really good.
She did a fucking tremendous job.
Yeah.
For real.
Oh, wow.
It's a delicious cookie, you know, like this.
The texture's great, too.
That vanilla paste, dude.
That's what I'm saying.
That's the difference between everything,
is that vanilla paste.
You get, like, it's a special cookie.
So this is Mercerie.
It's good.
The chef.
It's good.
It's friends with Russ, and now he was the one who told me.
No, that's good.
That's a good cookie.
This crunch is the best.
That one's crazy.
Bang for buck, you go Subway.
100%.
Bang for the buck, you go Old Spunk, my dog, because those,
I'm telling you, these could be warmed up
in the microwave 12 times.
Another chance.
It'll always be the same.
It'll always be the same.
This is my wife's chocolate chip cookie.
You gotta get in there.
A lot of pressure, bro.
Brown butter?
I can ask.
That's really good, too.
Smooth.
It's really good.
You heard it, man.
You're doing a great job.
Yeah, this is a real smorgasbord over here, man.
This one is crazy because it's soft and crunchy somehow.
Where's that one from?
This is the culture.
This one right here, you guys should try for the vanilla flavor in it.
That one has like a special, it has something to it, bro.
It's like, you don't really taste things like that.
Yeah.
And she nailed that shit.
She killed it, right?
She nailed it.
And when that comes out, that comes out really soft.
Like, you gotta let that sit for
20 minutes before you can
even take it off the pan.
That's up there with the subway cookie. Right?
That's up there.
That's up there. That's a fucking big deal.
That's a big deal, dog.
Apartment 4F is this one.
I used to live in 4J.
Let me see. There's a line out the door of that place this one. I used to live in 4J. Let me see.
There's a line out the door of that place this morning.
Really?
Bro, that place has a line.
I used to live right by it.
Is it only for cookies or what else is special?
French bakery.
Okay.
Croissants.
Croissants.
The whole deal.
My favorite French bakery is by far the Biciclette.
Bro.
Oh, yeah.
I saw that episode.
That was great.
No, it's by far.
He's the illest dude ever. He makes I saw that episode. That was great. No, it's by far. He's the illest dude ever.
He makes all the bread himself.
He was great.
He was great.
And he wasn't, like, pretentious like what you would think a French baker would be.
Nah.
He was a friendly student.
Because he's Ukrainian, you know?
He's like a Ukrainian Frenchman.
But, yeah, that whole place is crazy.
Classic.
The sandwiches they do.
Bro.
Choco roulette.
That one's good with the salt.
Finociese.
I love that.
Yeah.
This one's crazy, though. I love the finociese. Finociese. I love that. Yeah. This one's crazy.
I love the Finociese.
Culture?
Finociese is fucking crazy.
All time great.
That culture one is crazy.
Yeah, now that.
The crunch, man.
We used to eat at Robbie Slovic
and Yasser and he used to go there
all the time.
Oh, that's crazy.
All right.
Best slice in New York.
Rosario's Pizza in Astoria.
Where?
Rosario's.
Trust me.
It's unheard of.
No one really knows about it.
It's an old, like a old Sicilian dude, chubby guy who looks like Jerry Garcia.
Try it out.
Fucking crack.
And that Chrissy spot was legit?
Chrissy, I mean, Chrissy, I just want that spot to always be open.
He's just such a novel.
He's the fucking man.
Besides it being in the home, he now has a space.
He's trying to figure it out, you know?
But can you get that oven cooked
the same? I don't know. I'm going to have to
try, but I'm going to
try and book a day one time
at the house. How hard is that?
Not that hard. Just call them up and
we'll do the overcoming to the house. That'd be fire.
Because the pizza look crazy. Yeah. Think you need to
try that? Yeah. Need a house call?
If you got someone that's coming to New York,
like there's probably a lot of people listening
that are going to visit New York,
what restaurants do I need to check out?
Love that.
Great question.
Yeah, that is a fucking great question.
Red Hook Tavern.
Yeah, I've heard that's good.
Lilia.
Yeah, Lilia's great.
You got to go to Luger's.
You got to go to Queens.
You got to go to Jackson Heights
and just go to some of the Colombian spots,
some Thai spots.
One of my favorite Thai restaurants,
Cao Kang in Elmhurst.
Bro, Cao Kang.
Fucking stupid shit. Like, really
unheard of flavors.
It's like
you've never eaten Thai food before when you eat this stuff.
Why is there such good flavor from that region?
Like, why is Thai food and what's so specific about good flavor from that region? Why is Thai food...
What's so specific about that?
It's because they power pack
five or six different flavor profiles
into every dish.
Sweet, sour, salty, fucking spicy,
umami, this, that.
It's in every dish.
Indians love Thai food.
Singaporeans do.
It's that Pan-Asia.
It's all that area
where they use 40 different things
in one dish.
Yeah.
You know?
I went to Bangalore.
Every place you went to,
like the pizza place,
barbecue chicken pizza,
jalapenos on it.
They do everything a little Indian.
Thai food, they don't.
We let that sit.
It was a fascinating thing to see.
I like altering pizza. I don't want it to that sit. It was a fascinating thing to see. I like altering pizza.
I don't want it to just be like
an Italian pizza with all these beautiful
Italian products. Cool.
But we could play and fucking have fun.
There's room for both. Yeah, I like pineapple and
fucking shit on pizza. I like all that stuff.
Give it to me.
That sandwich you made.
Sorry, but the people who get upset about pineapple
on pizza act like there's no regular pizza places they could just go to.
Yeah, so say, well, try it.
If you had it the right way where it's not like some pineapple,
some ham, just done right.
But that's some Italian shit where it's like they've spent so long
curating and crafting their cuisine.
When you do anything to it, they're just like, no, no, we did all the things.
We tried it.
We did this already.
We tried pineapple.
It didn't hit.
It's like insulting to them that we would think we could add on to it,
which I get a little bit.
They've got a few thousand years.
Yeah, but all kinds of new shit comes out.
There's no new product that's coming fresh out of Italy that's being used?
That's what they say about Italy right now.
It's like they're stuck in the past.
Like Italians will go, we love our culture so much that it's almost hard to break free from it.
It's hard to be a new chef doing something novel because you get criticized that you're not respecting the way the food should be made.
You're right.
Whatever.
I talked to these young chefs in Rome that told me that their restaurant is really out there and amazing.
They use the soul of that type of thing, but they modernized it and people are being shunned.
But you know what?
They got to do that.
That's the way that you make a name for yourself.
I'm looking at dudes like Massimo Battuta, who just, like, sure, that's Italian food,
but is it?
Like, what the fuck is that?
He's like painting,
but that's not traditional.
What is his?
His food, like,
it's all artful things on a plate.
Like, it just looks gorgeous.
But at the root of it,
it's traditional cooking.
But he just makes it look better.
So people, I guess,
they get mad at him
for making something that would traditionally
be one shape of pasta and this sauce.
It has to be this or else it's not that.
And he does it differently.
But that's how you become a legend.
Fucking think out the box and break through.
Stop doing the same shit as everyone.
All right, last question before we wrap.
You made a sandwich in one of your videos.
It's a chicken cutlet, sesame seeds.
It looked like you had some fried bananas on there.
Was it bananas or plantains?
Oh, this is a long time.
Yeah, yeah, the fried maduro, like the sweet plantain.
Yeah, and then chocolate ice cream. Yeah. Now, it sounds crazy,
which is why I clicked the video,
but the explanation was interesting.
It was, and it was what we were saying earlier,
back to your childhood.
It was like, what'd you say I want?
Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich and a frosty.
So when you're eating that together,
that's what your mouth is going through, right?
Now, here's my question about it.
Are you, two questions, are you letting the
chicken cutlet cool before
you throw that ice cream on? No. So the
whole shit is just melting as you eat it?
Well, you put a big enough scoop there.
I've seen this recreated recently
and it looked really good.
There's a way to make
it really, there's a way to make it better, but
yeah, it's fucking messy.
It's going to be messy.
So you just accept it.
Yeah, you accept what you're eating.
You know that this is not right and you fucking do it anyway.
Yeah.
I mean, that looked crazy.
I ain't going to lie.
It's a good one, man.
Well, you just go get a spicy chicken sandwich
and a frosting and it'll be the same thing.
Yeah.
You heard it here first.
Action Bronson, everybody.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.