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Find out what Confucius, Fresh, and KUTX have coming up for SXSW and decide whether or not Nelly’s first three albums came up in the “hardest’ era. And in between Hip-Hop Facts and Confucius Reads the News, feathers get ruffled with Fresh’s Unpopular Opinion around the recent wave of women in rap.
The full transcript of this episode of The Breaks is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Fresh Knight I’m Fresh and you are now listening to the Breaks podcast. These are highlights from our Saturday night hip-hop show on KUTX 98.9 in Austin, Texas. My co-host Confucius Jones and I are native Austinites and we love talking to hip-hop, Texas hip-hop, hip-hop history, and what’s going on right now. And just so you know, the opinions expressed in the podcast are our own and do not necessarily reflect the position of KUTX in Austin, Texas.
Deezie Brown We here to talk over the airwaves. No matter where you’re from or where you stay. 98.9 you in the place to be. Wake up, wake up, wake up this is the Breaks. You could be anywhere but you ain’t. So let’s proceed with the wave. 98.9 You in the place to be wake up wake up wake this is the Breaks.
Confucius Jones South by Southwest next week.
Fresh Knight Yeah, officially next week. Music officially starts on Monday.
Confucius Jones You just mentioned SXSBreaks.
Fresh Knight Yup, yup.
Confucius Jones Outside of us obviously being there because we have to be in that. No one do. We have to be. We want to be there. What other plans you got for south by?
Fresh Knight I don’t know, man. And be honest with you. There’s a lot going on. I want to go to the Billboard stage. I think rolling Stone is here and I have a stage I want to hit up. There is some people performing that I want to see the rolling Stone has, including the great Jackie Vinson coming out of Austin, and it’s some local stuff that I want to see that I’m trying to go. Deezie Brown is doing something over at OFC Creative’s. I went to his, art gallery last Friday. Really, really great. He talked about it. He really has some truly innovative things he’s working on. I know a lot of people say when the music that they are doing and the things that they are doing with their music are really innovative. It is just kind of a remixed version of something that has already happened. But Eazy-E is doing something I haven’t seen somebody else do, and I’m looking forward to him curating these shows. I think he’s having going, oh, the entire week of the music week of South by Southwest.
Confucius Jones Sounded like a commercial or something
Fresh Knight I’m sorry I just I, I he’s he reached out to me and we talked about it. So. Yeah.
Confucius Jones He told you to plug it I’m sure.
Fresh Knight No, he didn’t tell me to plug it on show. He asked us if we wanted to be a part of it. I didn’t really.
Confucius Jones That was I was fine. That question weird because what does that mean?
Fresh Knight Yeah. And I didn’t really know how to be a part of that. Like how do the breaks be a part of this one? We’re already doing a showcase. You’re doing the showcase like I don’t.
Confucius Jones Yeah. No, I hate to be that guy, but I love you all to death. But if y’all have other stuff going on during SXSW show-wise, it’s not going to take precedent over SXSBreaks. That is our one official show. We’ve been doing it for years. We push it so and I don’t get chatted easy, loved easy. But yeah, it’s not easy. Say everybody.
Fresh Knight It’s not gonna.
Confucius Jones Happen. I mean, it sounds cool. I’m not doing anything. I’m going SXSBreaks. Could be a chill. It’s. I’ll be there. I spoke at push today. That’s about it.
Fresh Knight Getting that Porsche money.
Confucius Jones Damn right.
Fresh Knight Scratch what? It went corporate.
Confucius Jones Hope it stay that way too.
Fresh Knight Big time corporate. Yes, but the Germans.
Confucius Jones But that if the Germans can’t get a bomb. But, for.
Fresh Knight Those who haven’t seen Oppenheimer.
Confucius Jones That’s funny. That movie. This is so off topic. It’s funny that movie that they spent most of that movie racing, they beat the Germans getting it, and then the Germans surrendered, and they still spanked them. So it ain’t about the Germans anymore. Is it?
Fresh Knight We won.
Confucius Jones Yes, I buy because we’ve been at KUTX seven years and my role here is to be involved in a lot of the live shows. My south-by is more work. Yeah, which is fine. Like it like we all say here at KUTX. This job is fun. I’ve had a lot of unfun jobs. So very true, very true. Telling people here, I mean, I got to be at this live show. Them people look at me like I was crazy. What? Like last year we went to Sacred Souls and they done done a tiny dance thing and all the movies and stuff. Yeah. So I’m not complaining, but you’re must have about the free time, but it’s not as much. And then also deejaying, you know, clubs and stuff. So it’s not like the years past we would it’s been 2 or 3 days just wandering around sixth Street. Right, right, right.
Fresh Knight I tell a lot of people that too, like when they ask me what I’m doing and I’m saying, you know, man, I’m like, I’m working south by, like, the station is doing this, this and this. And I also do social media. So like you, you I have an obligation to be there to capture some of this for social media more so Instagram and Instagram stories. So like yeah, my time is spent. Our time is spent working and running around doing the things that our employer is doing, and we do a lot. I think this year is I think you’ll see it. Our program director, Matt Riley, said this is the year we’re doing the most things this year, doing stuff myself with him we’ve ever done. You and the other host, just did The Hook ’em House over at Antone’s. Yeah. DJing there. And then we doing what is it? Rock the shore. The auditorium show is free. Show our version. Bring you Rock the park to South by Southwest. And then we are part of the radio Day stage.
Confucius Jones And then it wasn’t us and one other people.
Fresh Knight Yeah. Laugh. And then we also live from Schultz, our live broadcast.
Confucius Jones So the KUTX, in the movie part of South by the.
Fresh Knight Premiering a John Aielli movie. So like we do on a lot is you man, it’s a lot going on this year.
Confucius Jones CJ’s continues to strengthen his hold over the Austin music scene.
Fresh Knight People continue to be upset about. It is amazing man. That big game.
Confucius Jones Hey man.
Fresh Knight You know get some weight on. You can’t say that you.
Confucius Jones Like get your weight up.
Fresh Knight Now go say something out of the camera, I said. But I’m a lead out on a lot. I ain’t gonna get.
Confucius Jones My camera on next thing. But, yeah.
Fresh Knight No Della Reese.
Confucius Jones So my players kind of descend around that, and I’ll say this back when me and you, or just in general, would just wander around sixth Street and find things, are you follow social media and see what, you know, parties and popped up. Who’s going to be where? I’m only glad those days are behind me because when I got so much money into it. Let’s walk in. I’m sorry. Look back in the day, man. We were killing it. We was parking for a walk and for.
Fresh Knight Walking all day.
Confucius Jones Like I do not miss that, man. Especially when you got other stuff got to do. And also, this is just for me personally, the way it’s set up for me now, how I move, I can make more money because I was spending money back then. I’m making it so it allows me to kind of just really focus my time. Because if I spent all day going to different things and then having to deejay at night, I’d be wiped out and then having to be at Schultz at six in the morning, you know, and then.
Fresh Knight Definitely now I definitely I just think we are at an age I hate to hate and make that sound so. Oh, but I think, I think most people are going through this like we are at a, we are at a time where like, we just don’t want to do all of that walking like and being out all day. I know guys that artists that like you say, and I guess in the heyday there will be out all day, every day. And now those artists come out. When they just have to come out like I’m doing something, I’m outside and I’ll be off probably for the rest of the day or until this point, and then I’m back inside. Or if I got multiple shows that day, I’m just doing my shows and then I’m going back home, is no point for me to be outside all day for a week straight. That was crazy. That’s crazy.
Confucius Jones And that’s that’s the natural evolution of life. You know, it’s like I would argue if you go to Rolling Loud, if you spend X amount of years going there as a guest or, you know, somebody bought a ticket, if you’re driving at some point in time, if your goal is to be a part of the music industry, you want to be in Rolling Loud, cause that’s all really happened with us. We just transition from, you know, wanting to be in the industry to being a part of it in Austin especially. And obligations are different.
Fresh Knight And it’s not much. I’m not missing out on anything. Like I don’t catch FOMO doing side by side with like, I may see somebody at a show that I would have liked to go to, but I don’t be like, oh man, I wish I could’ve went in there. Like, I look out, I look fine, but what time was it, man? I’m tired or I’m trying to go home.
Confucius Jones That I granted a lot of people happy about this. There’s no like, huge, huge artists coming here to I’ma go. I gotta see them. Those years have passed too, so. And I’m happy with my main focus being South by South Briggs.
Fresh Knight Yeah, that’s that’s really my main objective. And like I said, everything else that we here at station have going on.
Confucius Jones I think that’s cool. Continue to grow up to be able to throw south by events and put artist on and, and to be a part of from the other side of it. It’s it’s a great feeling. Granted, you were thrown south by shelter for south by south breaks, but you know, it is. I bet it helps to have the cooperation.
Fresh Knight It definitely does.
Confucius Jones Instead of being all you definitely does.
Fresh Knight And that me, just me in like, 20 other people trying to put a show to it. It’s a lot easier. Still don’t like doing shows, but it is a lot easier. It is a lot easier. I will say that.
Confucius Jones Yeah. Now.
Fresh Knight And I told y’all, I told y’all. On this show. How y’all look to us out by now? Y’all on here complaining about how y’all want all the corporation back. Y’all want all of the big name act? Back when I was here, y’all was saying sell by peaked and it got too big and they sold out. But now y’all want all of that back I told y’all I told y’all now y’all miss it. You can’t have it both ways, man. You can’t have it both ways. If you want to party just say you want a party. You not there for the music and all of that. Just say you want to party. That’s all y’all want to do. And that’s just the gist of y’all mad because y’all came party like you did in 2011, not 2011 anymore. Man.
Confucius Jones It don’t need to be, surprise had its ups and downs and people forget that Covid was a thing and it takes time to recover. But for me, side by side, it’s doing in terms of being an all encompassing event for us that I still enjoy because for ACL, for example, our reach is very limited. We can only do so much forseeable. So how about we can?
Fresh Knight Yeah.
Confucius Jones Like we’re not we don’t have on stage an ACL, but side by side we’re able to create side by side breaks. And like I say, give all this an opportunity.
Fresh Knight And imagine the headache if we had our own stage at ACL.
Confucius Jones Headache for you. And we don’t get it for me do that right now.
Fresh Knight I’m talking about for the station and overall.
Confucius Jones Oh yeah.
Fresh Knight Because it wouldn’t just be us curating the stage.
Confucius Jones Yeah. You know.
Fresh Knight But I’m just the boy. And I’m.
Confucius Jones Not that. But that being said, hope to see you all out there South by southwest, not just side by side breaks like seeing me in fresh would be all over.
Fresh Knight Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Confucius Jones So, you know, if you. I listen to the show and enjoy the show, come out and say hi. We always enjoy speaking to y’all.
Fresh Knight So, Confucius shared this article with me via complex that talked about, well, Nelly, it was an insert of Nelly who was on the shot, which I didn’t know was still the show.
Confucius Jones Yeah, it’s on YouTube. It’s not even me anymore.
Fresh Knight I had no idea that was still the show.
Confucius Jones And LeBron was really alone that night.
Fresh Knight I mean, in the middle of a season. So I would imagine.
Confucius Jones Last year.
Fresh Knight And.
Confucius Jones That’s what that film is all in like multiple times one day. But anyway.
Fresh Knight Continue I can I can see that. But anyway, yeah, Nelly was the recent guest on the shop and he was just exclaiming how? His era of hip hop was the hardest ever. And me and confused hardest in what regard? That’s what we were trying to kind of figure out the context of what he meant by hardest. Ever. Was it the hardest to lie? Become a star. Was it the hardest like the in the sense though they were making the best music? I think what we surmised was that it was the hardest era ever as far as getting recognition and. Getting to a certain, I guess, status and superstar level. Nelly was saying how he had to compete. When he came out, he had to compete with a DMX, a Lil Wayne, Eminem, a Luda, etc. etc. and 50 cent and everybody was competing for the top spot and that was rather hard to do. Jay-Z has the famous line only dudes moving units and pimp juice in us. Speaking about himself, Rockefeller, Eminem and Nelly. Nelly went diamond, his first album out. I think he has three Grammys. I don’t know. I think in the excerpt, in a little in the clip, he mentions having three Grammys. I would think he has more than three Grammys, but it’s the Grammys. You never know.
Confucius Jones Yeah, I think he got one.
Fresh Knight I don’t know, but he also led off this conversation saying the Grammys have to do better about recognizing the great talent within the genre of rap.
Confucius Jones Yeah, he has three.
Fresh Knight Okay. Oh, well, yeah. So was the 2000 the hardest era ever? Because he said ever.
Confucius Jones So I’m just go by the years that he dropped an album. Right. So the first year he dropped was 2000. I’m just gonna read off some albums that were considered top level like sold a lot of critically acclaimed. The first one came out in January. The locks we had, the streets, I would argue, guess a big album.
Fresh Knight It was a big album.
Confucius Jones The Eastside is first album, the Snoop Dogg’s Eastside.
Fresh Knight Hey, I got that.
Confucius Jones So I’m still in February. I’ll let you know when I go to next month. Also in February, Ghostface Killah Supreme Cloud Tale, which we argued might be the best solo Wu-Tang album.
Fresh Knight Yes.
Confucius Jones Trick Daddy, Book of Thugs, which had Shut up on it, wasn’t the biggest album, but it was big down here.
Fresh Knight Yeah.
Confucius Jones Being single, the truth.
Fresh Knight That was a pretty big album, especially for the East Coast at the time.
Confucius Jones And then that month ends with Bone Thug Harmony Beat in resurrection that I went platinum. So going into March, we have Life Story by Black Rob, which had whoa, okay, Ice Cube, War and Peace volume two. I don’t know if that’s sold. Well.
Fresh Knight War and peace. Hair. What was on War and Peace.
Confucius Jones That had the hello song with Dre and Ren. Hello.
Fresh Knight I thought this takes. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Confucius Jones Okay.
Fresh Knight Do it. Okay, I don’t know, I don’t know. You say you can do it from next. Next Friday, right? Yeah. Okay okay okay okay.
Confucius Jones Those two were on there and that, album would platinum.
Fresh Knight So it well enough. Yeah.
Confucius Jones I’m still in March. You have Trina the debut album, The Baddest B.
Fresh Knight Okay.
Confucius Jones Common. Like water for chocolate.
Fresh Knight Okay.
Confucius Jones Big pun. Yeah, baby. Okay.
Fresh Knight His last album.
Confucius Jones His last album, The Brat. Unrestricted.
Fresh Knight No.
Confucius Jones Right away I had that album.
Fresh Knight Some stiff competition here.
Confucius Jones So now I’m in my big time, I, I got that work also in May, The Marshall Mathers LP. Eminem, which is one of the highest selling rap out of all time with sales money.
Fresh Knight Shout outs. I was money, man.
Confucius Jones Yes, I was money three six Mafia. When the smoke clear that’s about.
Fresh Knight Oh man I am. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, that’s a classic.
Confucius Jones Busta Rhymes anarchy.
Fresh Knight Okay. All right.
Confucius Jones This is June. I’m sorry. And we’re still in June. Little Camden Toys I comes out of June Nelly and drops the debut album, Country Grandma. June. July. We have a big mo city of sirup. I know it might not be big to y’all, but it was big down here.
Fresh Knight It was a pretty big album. Kind of. That was a kind of pretty that kind of hit regionally.
Confucius Jones Yeah, it was huge.
Fresh Knight Kind of help break.
Confucius Jones The Houston Houston.
Fresh Knight Scene through.
Confucius Jones Yeah. Because then, I also didn’t know this.
Fresh Knight Purple stuff was a big song.
Confucius Jones It wasn’t on there.
Fresh Knight I wouldn’t know that. Wasn’t that album?
Confucius Jones No, that was man. And.
Fresh Knight Bag dead man. Look, man.
Confucius Jones Look, whatever’s on there.
Fresh Knight That kind of my baby.
Confucius Jones Yeah, that was.
Fresh Knight A hell break. Yeah, that I do. It’s banks that broke Houston. See, they at least do the arrest.
Confucius Jones That was the first Houston album I ever bought. That’s what I’m saying. Regionally. It was huge.
Fresh Knight Yeah, that was that big.
Confucius Jones When they people talk about you can, you know, go platinum doesn’t take a loan did start with platinum takes loan. And then that same day little Flip the Leprechaun came out.
Fresh Knight So that was a very huge album regionally.
Confucius Jones Very huge album. All right then shooting down to August, we have White Cliffs second album, the the eclectic two five to a book.
Fresh Knight I remember.
Confucius Jones That one and I wasn’t.
Fresh Knight On it. Yeah.
Confucius Jones Because on.
Fresh Knight Someone Bleed or no one was.
Confucius Jones You know right down September 11th. Huge with goat. Yeah. That’s where the name came from.
Fresh Knight There been like a phenomenon.
Confucius Jones Black Eyed Peas album before Fergie bridging the gap.
Fresh Knight Okay okay.
Confucius Jones Okay. Mr. Cole’s album fourth album. Let’s get ready. That was a huge one. Shake it fast and danger.
Fresh Knight Well, now. Yeah, yeah.
Confucius Jones Let’s see.
Fresh Knight Finally, I know the name of that.
Confucius Jones Job route in October. Route 336.
Fresh Knight Man. Look, that was the one right there.
Confucius Jones Shoot down October. We have Jay-Z with the dynasty rock La Familia.
Fresh Knight The compilation.
Confucius Jones Outcast. They’re gonna.
Fresh Knight Big album.
Confucius Jones Snoop Dogg, dead man walking. I remember that album. Oh. They didn’t want to think death row throughout. That’d be pretty.
Fresh Knight Yeah.
Confucius Jones Okay, now, in November, we have Wu-Tang with the W, Capone and Noriega. The reunion, I had it.
Fresh Knight I had it on tape.
Confucius Jones Hello, old fat refugees. P.
Fresh Knight Hey, look, man. Look, man.
Confucius Jones Daddy.
Fresh Knight That’s. It was a B album, bro.
Confucius Jones Then we were December. Memphis. Believe the understanding.
Fresh Knight I had it in.
Confucius Jones Lil Wayne. The lights out in December.
Fresh Knight I didn’t realize that.
Confucius Jones And Snoop Dogg, the last meal. That was the year that Nelly came out.
Fresh Knight I had the last meal and last meal. It was a hard album to get around, man. We lay low and.
Confucius Jones I like that album.
Fresh Knight Great out. Cause to me for that.
Confucius Jones To be honest with you, and I’m not saying this in a bad way. His first two albums, Under No Limit, kind of sounded like No Limit albums, just with Snoop Dogg on it, for sure. The last video kind of went back to what he was good at last.
Fresh Knight This is the last album Eat Off Me.
Confucius Jones Yeah, I had that, but that was 2000.
Fresh Knight Of.
Confucius Jones 2000. That’s when Country Grandma comes out.
Fresh Knight It’s a tough year.
Confucius Jones So that’s 2003 is when it comes out good. And this one again I’d make this a little bit faster because you know you’re tryin comes out in February. Freeway Philadelphia freeway comes out in February. Album fabulous Street dreams comes out in March.
Fresh Knight That was his biggest album at that point at that time.
Confucius Jones Lil Kim La Bella mafia comes out in March a.
Fresh Knight Breakdown.
Confucius Jones The diplomatic diplomatic community comes out in March.
Fresh Knight We all know about that.
Confucius Jones Exactly. Yeah, bone crushing attention comes out April. You see, Joe Biden’s debut album comes out in.
Fresh Knight June and we know what that is.
Confucius Jones Black Eyed Peas elephant with Fergie the first with Fergie, comes out in June. Gigi’s jackpot comes on July. T.I. trap music comes out in August. I’m state property the Chain Gang volume two guns.
Fresh Knight Good album is on right.
Confucius Jones Album dual Santana’s first one for me to you right. The Neptunes planet the clones.
Fresh Knight Fire some fire that came out in 2003. Man.
Confucius Jones In August you have nappy roots, wooden leather that went platinum. Young Bloods, Drake and partners. September we got Bubba Sparks deliverance.
Fresh Knight That was a good album I had it.
Confucius Jones It was good album DMX, Grand champ, Yin Yang twins. Me and my brother. That’s the biggest album.
Fresh Knight That’s the one they say they had Jay-Z had. And it comes like, yo, y’all messing up my money?
Confucius Jones Yeah, I remember them. September. You have Obie Trice with G years. They didn’t go platinum, but it went gold.
Fresh Knight I didn’t have it, but I know a lot of people who did.
Confucius Jones Okay. I speak about a little below.
Fresh Knight Let’s see. Know what that.
Confucius Jones Ludicrous chicken and beer would like, Tober? In November of Tupac Resurrection soundtrack, which was good. Jerusalem. I didn’t do that well.
Fresh Knight That was what clapped back on it, right?
Confucius Jones Yeah. G-Unit beg for Mercy in November. Jay-Z to Black album in November. Missy Elliott this is not a test. And in December you have Memphis Bollywood made.
Fresh Knight Okay.
Confucius Jones So that’s Nellie Veal, 2004. I’ve rendered some real quick to Kanye West college drop. I might even do the date. College dropout. Trivial little scrappy young guns. Tough love in the odd flier. Die a little flip. You got to feel me, Ghostface. Kill it pretty Tony Am, D12 world, D12, meet the Man to Cars zero the prequel that interview it it didn’t.
Fresh Knight I know it did.
Confucius Jones Lil Wayne, The Carter, the roots, the Tipping point mob did America’s Nightmare. Jim Jones on my way to church.
Fresh Knight I like America’s nightmare young buck.
Confucius Jones Fred Cash feel.
Fresh Knight Classic.
Confucius Jones Lil Romeo, Romeo land.
Fresh Knight That’s a horrible night for an album.
Confucius Jones Twilit quality, the beautiful struggle.
Fresh Knight My brother had that trick.
Confucius Jones Daddy. Thug matrimony. Married to the street’s fabulous. Real talk. Jarell, are you early? Eminem. Encore. Crunk. Juice, Little John, the Eastside Boyz, Snoop Dogg, R&B rhythm gangsta.
Fresh Knight The guy who’s the good ol man.
Confucius Jones Nah, streets, disciple, T.I., Urban Legend, Cameron, Purple Haze, Ludacris, the Red Light District, Tupac, Lord of the game, horrible. So those albums came out the year that Nelly’s first three albums came out.
Fresh Knight All right. So I wanted to really argue against this, with Nelly saying he had the hardest era, but just running down the list of those albums. And some stiff competition me like there’s some heart. And it’s not as if like that was that was hard to compete with because we I know everybody looks at Luda now is like a movie star. Well, he just does movies. But like that was a point where like, Luda kind of was like the top dough.
Confucius Jones Well, you have to also think about it to Nelly level itself, I think sold like a lot. I think I want to say it’s sold at least 4 or 5.
Fresh Knight It’s all a lot.
Confucius Jones And it came out the year before. That’s right. And so you have to think to yourself like so yeah, as of right now it stands. It sold 7,000,070 copies. Nelly was selling like tons of like the most have named went platinum a little bit better. But Nelly, like I said, Nelly, him and them were doing double digit sales. Don’t think about Nelly. Is that Nelly’s reign was a moment in time and it wasn’t, unfortunately, this. Genre pushing forward type of movement in a way. Okay, you can say we put Saint Louis on, but there’s a big gap between the success of Nelly and Ginger, which, if you’re looking at this was around the same time to then you get sexy Red, because after that it was the ones off, you know, you had.
Fresh Knight Yeah. Huey. You talk about Saint Louis?
Confucius Jones Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Fresh Knight Huey.
Confucius Jones That’s what I’m saying. Huey. And if. It’s really bad, it.
Fresh Knight Hits.
Confucius Jones You that. Really wrap it, though.
Fresh Knight I’m going a minute. For argument’s sake.
Confucius Jones I think Memphis when he’s Saint Louis, anyway.
Fresh Knight I don’t know. Oh. Jaquan.
Confucius Jones Jaquan. But that’s around Saint Thomas. Nelly.
Fresh Knight Yeah. So, I mean.
Confucius Jones So I’m saying. But I think that’s why Nelly doesn’t always get mentioned in this conversation. But yeah, he was it arguably the second highest selling artist of his time. He was outselling Ja Rule.
Fresh Knight He was the.
Confucius Jones Driver who had massive hits.
Fresh Knight Massive.
Confucius Jones So I kind of I kind of you say.
Fresh Knight Route 336 came out.
Confucius Jones In oh four.
Fresh Knight Yeah. Around. Yeah. Like route three through six.
Confucius Jones No, no, no, I’m sorry to that. That was around Nelly real time.
Fresh Knight That was like the album. That was the one that had all the joints on it. That was the one that most people, all the songs. You know what Ja Rule they was on rule three, three, six. Yeah.
Confucius Jones I think I know, I think Nelly’s kind of right. Like you mentioned this affair. I mean, often mix the rise of the South takes place. Yeah.
Fresh Knight Like you rap as a genre in the 2000. Finally kind of broke away from it just being the east in the West Coast. Yeah. 2000 when you saw the rise of the Midwest with Eminem and would have would have Nelly. Yeah. You had Bone Thugs and you had common, but nobody they weren’t really only a hollerin about like ripping just the Midwest. And like Nelly came in saying, I’m from Saint Louis, brought his people with him. We did the Midwest. We like we from the Midwest. This is the thing. And then you had Eminem from Detroit and up to that point. Nobody really was paying attention to Detroit. I know y’all gonna say with J Dilla. No, nobody was hollerin J Dilla like that. Let’s just be let’s keep it.
Confucius Jones That was more for rap.
Fresh Knight Pure time. Let’s just keep it a. Let’s just keep it a buck. J Dilla wasn’t the superstar that he is today. Yeah. And I think that came more with his passing. And he did with out there nobody. He wasn’t mentioned like that. Let’s just say that. So like when Eminem came he was like man, he from where he from Detroit. And then he brought all the D12 people with him. Yeah. And then Nelly came, and then Nelly was coming from Saint Louis. And up until that point, I don’t think we heard a rapper from Saint Louis.
Confucius Jones That’s how I remember that one.
Fresh Knight That was big enough to, like, really remember.
Confucius Jones Well, with that being said.
Fresh Knight He has a point. You might can find an argument against it, but like really he had a point like, yeah, the South, the entire South kind of started breaking through and never stopped coming. He broke away from me just being East Coast and West Coast. You got other regions like the South and the Midwest, and all of those people started coming with star legitimate stars with staying power like Nelly had staying power. Eminem, despite how you may feel about them today, have real staying power. Like I said, Ludacris at one point like was the top dope coming out of Atlanta. Like it wasn’t at that point. It wasn’t just Outkast. It was literally it was the Yungblud, it was Lil Jon. Lil Jon had a stranglehold on everybody. We can’t even deny that. So like, yeah, it was that was tough to get around and to go. Diamond your first album like like that’s tough. And for Nelly view to sell what it sold. Wood, 50 cent steel coming out and that and get rid of that trying doing what it did and like. Trap music coming out. Trap music was a big owl T I was like the guy. He was the king of the South and nobody was refuting nobody with little flip backs.
Confucius Jones I agree with Nelly on that one.
Fresh Knight We’ll be right back after this quick break.
Confucius Jones Hip hop facts, time hip hop facts about the culture of hip hip hop. Sometimes R&B, like I say that because there might be times by brownes the facts might slide in there. So just give y’all heads up when that happens.
Fresh Knight The video was awfully specific. Bobby Brown.
Confucius Jones King of R&B. What you mean? I’ve stood by the effort.
Fresh Knight I’m not, I’m not, I’m not arguing against it. I’m just saying, like, you could just say facts that are nice. You got a Bobby Brown back coming?
Confucius Jones I got two R&B, one coming. So rl.
Fresh Knight Rl. Yeah. A lot.
Confucius Jones Of y’all might not know him, but I do.
Fresh Knight Lee man for Next.
Confucius Jones Yeah. He. Was doing a podcast and was saying that he was supposed to do a song with Kelly Rowland, Kelly Rowland, Destiny’s Child. But like I said, Orioles lead singer of a group called Nick Army Group called Nick’s. They were real big in the late 90s if.
Fresh Knight Anything today saying.
Confucius Jones Yeah. Which is why they brought it together demo and it works out well. But he was saying that he was approached by the label cause they were, Destiny’s Child and Nick’s was signed to Columbia. He was approached by the label to do a song with Missy and Kelly. He know he was labeling him to a song with Beyonce and Missy. You know, it was like, well, I’m kind of more loyal to Kelly because I worked her before, and I said, I told her we could do a song together and labels like, now, Megan, it’s got to be it’s got to be Beyonce. And so he turned it down and that song ended up being crazy feeling from Missy’s second album came out 2000. It would be on say.
Fresh Knight Okay.
Confucius Jones And so but yeah, he was saying my loyalty to Kelly. She was my friend. And we were together before. It’s made me miss out of opportunity working with Beyoncé and missing. He said that in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have done it.
Fresh Knight Yeah. I mean, I don’t think Kelly would have been, like, mad that you worked with her group mate and Missy Elliott.
Confucius Jones But the point he was making was that he saw back then how they were already trying to angle Beyonce.
Fresh Knight I mean, I get that.
Confucius Jones So he got her like, nah, man. Like Kelly’s good to label’s got like, yeah, but Beyonce’s.
Fresh Knight And I think we all saw it. Yeah, I think we all found it.
Confucius Jones But me, it took still took years for businesses to finally go solo.
Fresh Knight So and I applaud her for that because she could have died away earlier.
Confucius Jones Facts. Yeah. Crazy feelings would be honesty.
Fresh Knight Okay. All right, all right. Nighty night.
Confucius Jones Year was supposed to be him, but.
Fresh Knight Oh, well, I mean, hey, you ain’t found.
Confucius Jones You lose a great record, dude, though. And, like, he needed it. They needed him.
Fresh Knight My first fact. Well, says you, you preface that some facts may not be about, you know, hip hop, or they just may be culturally related. Bad boys. The news hit that Bad Boys four has finished filming in Miami.
Confucius Jones Talk about the labor. They still labor.
Fresh Knight I mean, I ain’t bringing it, dude.
Confucius Jones I wouldn’t be surprised what I’m saying.
Fresh Knight But I think they are still a label. I think like it is still bad. Boy, I.
Confucius Jones Think they clearly have to be concerned, but yeah.
Fresh Knight Yeah. But anyway, the movie Bad Boy, it stars Will Smith in more Lawrence. Will Smith was on All the Smoke, which once again an old episode. I think so, but they asked him about how he came to be starring in the movie Bad Boys and he say, you know, Martin brought me in. Martin had script originally with Martin, had this group in the and he said he wouldn’t do it without me. He was originally supposed to do it. Were supposed to be Martin and Eddie Murphy and Martin’s sister suggested. Well, you know who would be great for this? Who? I think it would be great for you. Why don’t you reach out and ask Will, Will Smith if you want to do it? So Martin was like, you know, I’m gonna do that. But before Martin got the script, the movie was originally set to star Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz.
Confucius Jones That’s all I was like, I could as well. Somebody else that he was.
Fresh Knight It was Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz. That would have been a totally different movie than what we got.
Confucius Jones Yeah, yeah.
Fresh Knight We’ll say that it ended up not working out. Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz ended up falling out, so the movie didn’t have it. And Martin got the script the and said he told the studio he wouldn’t do it without him. And so that’s how we got the titular film, Bad Boys in the in Bad Boys to it in Let the Do It. I don’t think they should have me and then we getting this for one.
Confucius Jones So yeah, I think at this point we’ll Cory’s like, look, I’m gonna do stuff I want to do.
Fresh Knight I mean, I understand.
Confucius Jones Yeah, I was, I was as you were talking, I was looking up that fact and yeah, you were right. It was supposed to be Dana Carvey and.
Fresh Knight I love it.
Confucius Jones And also, they offered, the studio all for us. You know, how the role of Mike Lowry. And he turned it down. Would you say that the worst mistake of his career, and it’s almost a bad boy was one of those things, too, where you can’t picture it being anybody other than more than we’ll and we’ll I’ve heard we’ll say before that Martin really had looked out for him by being in that movie, because we was only on Fresh Prince at that time, and Martin was the bigger star. So what kind of like, hey, man, look, I want weirdness, okay?
Fresh Knight We’ll get we’ll and we’ll say the script Martin had wasn’t really finished. And so both of them will come in from being on television. So they were used to doing stuff on the fly or having to improvise. So he was like a lot of what we see in the movie was them coming in. Would they? Martin had his writing team, we had a writing team, and they were writing a group, kind of as they were filming the movie.
Confucius Jones That makes sense. Jerry Bruckheimer said, look, I’ll give my slow motion what I.
Fresh Knight Want and we’re going to blow some stuff up.
Confucius Jones We good and bad it. Tomorrow was Bad Bunny’s birthday, the biggest reggaeton star in the world. Fun fact about him if you do know where he got his name from. Apparently he saw he was, you know, started musical. We saw a picture of him in a bunny suit when he was a young child, and I guess he didn’t want to be in that. But he chose. He didn’t. He didn’t want to be in the bunny student picture. He looks upset. And so he was like, I’m not a bad kid. I just at that moment just was really I was bad. I was a bad bunny.
Fresh Knight No. Okay. All right.
Confucius Jones That’s what his name comes from.
Fresh Knight I mean, that’s what’s up, Benito. I mad at that woman a lot of I think a lot of us would look back on some from childhood and be like. Yeah, I didn’t really want to do that, man.
Confucius Jones Yeah. He he’s like, he said, I want him back. He’s just a picture. I didn’t want to bother him so bad. Bunny.
Fresh Knight When we want to be Bobby very I for him to be in a bunny suit.
Confucius Jones Amen.
Fresh Knight My second fact recently, also in the news, two men were arrested for the killing of the great late, great Jam Master J of Run-D.M.C.. So, my fat goes to say that J. Mr. J was an early mentor for 50 cent and Onyx and Fragile started. He met 50 cent for the first time in the studio with Jay and after meeting initially meeting they and J had to work on the song spray. Joe didn’t specify if it was just fragile and 50, or if it was 50 and all of Onyx. And. I don’t know where the song is, or somewhere there’s a song with free in 50 cent or Freight or 50, and.
Confucius Jones There’s always these mysterious mythological songs we never hear, like that mysterious Dre and Biggie song that exist somewhere in the world of DNA.
Fresh Knight Oh yeah. Radio would just like. And I think if you are immersed in the rat world and in the culture, you know, Jim SJ was instrumental in bringing helping bring up a lot of the younger guys coming out of Queens.
Confucius Jones Yeah. And then you finally got the guys who did it.
Fresh Knight Yeah.
Confucius Jones Well, my final fact is another thing. No, I’m not saying New York because premiere is not from New York.
Fresh Knight No he’s.
Confucius Jones Not. He’s from Houston, Texas, but, DJ Premier. I didn’t know this produced. Every record of getting stories is. Yesterday they celebrated the anniversary of the album.
Fresh Knight I have the gangster Effect as well.
Confucius Jones But yeah, he produced every song for a gangster except for two, which were produced by the late 45 gang who produced Stand by Eminem and oh yeah, he did Hard Knock Life to Knock Life to.
Fresh Knight RPM in 45.
Confucius Jones He passed away last year.
Fresh Knight He did in the.
Confucius Jones It’s my final.
Fresh Knight Fact. My final fact is also a gangster or a fact. Man. You would think we planned it.
Confucius Jones Yeah, I know, right.
Fresh Knight I just learned this. The gangster was originally started in 1985, in Boston, Massachusetts.
Confucius Jones Isn’t that where was the name from?
Fresh Knight That is where Benzino is from.
Confucius Jones Meets the other guy gangster on that thing.
Fresh Knight But guru? No guru is from New York. Okay, but, it was originally started by some other gentleman, which I had heard before. It was kind of different factions of gangster, but it was started by a guy in Boston by the name of M.C. Keith E yes, a very, very 1980s rap name for so for someone. But yeah, it was originally started by him in 85, in Boston, and then later made his way to New York, where guru hated it up and they brought Premier in and they became the legendary group of the early to mid 90s.
Confucius Jones Okay, true.
Fresh Knight Any like you said, they are celebrating their, anniversary of Heart Urn, which is their second album of Preme and Guru. We’re going to get into some music from them. Also, today is the death anniversary of The Notorious B.I.G.
Confucius Jones Yeah, not March 9th.
Fresh Knight Greatest rapper alive died on March 9th.
Confucius Jones Put that on the list did you Jack.
Fresh Knight You missed that one. Missed that one. Jack. You could.
Confucius Jones Put Gigi on it.
Fresh Knight Was.
Confucius Jones I forgot the death anniversary of George Biagi. Boy, boy boy. But it is time for unpopular opinion with fresh himself.
Fresh Knight I think I got confused this week. I think we’re going to argue. I think we are going to argue. So I’m scrolling on the internet and I saw something that was appealing. Saw somebody speaking about Cardi B and how Cardi B, you’re on the clock. We need a second album. She has teased that second album. She is coming with it. I think it was either this year or next year, something like that. And they were like, well, this isn’t the first time that she said this. Like she said this before that, like an album is coming and then we got nothing. Then they later went on to speak about women in rap and how they were saying that the wave is done, the wave of women in rap that that has been going on.
Confucius Jones Joe Budden want you.
Fresh Knight Yeah, it’s going that it is done.
Confucius Jones Surprise Biden. Me I’m not.
Fresh Knight I’m not saying it’s done. My unpopular opinion is that the rap girl wave is near the end. Now I know what people are going to say. I know what people are going to say. People are going to say what y’all have been on here championing the women in rap. And that doesn’t change all of, say, the women in Austin are going to be the ones that break through. That might change for me, that that might change for me. But I think that’s a different conversation for another day. And I don’t think women in Austin in rap are ready to have that conversation. But that’s neither here nor there. We’re going to keep it pushing. So, as I say, my unpopular opinion is the rap girl wave is near the end. And why I think it’s near the end is because I think the whole like Joe Budden said, I think the whole find a chick. Well, he said, find him, take him to Columbia, get that done, and then put him with a pop and producer. That’s over. Well, I don’t think a label is flying a woman to the Columbia to get cosmetic surgery. I think a woman is just doing it on her own. But I do think the whole find is good looking. Woman. Put them with a hot pop and producer today, and then we get a hit, and then we push it. And then I think all of that’s over. I think that is over and done with. I think there are women rappers that are here to stay. I think Megan is here to stay. I think Flo Milli is here to stay, despite me always saying that. I think this is the year that she’s broke through. I think she’s broken through. I think with somebody like Flo Miller, you have to stop measuring her success. By the way you would measure success. I think Lotto is here to stay. As much as we talk about Nicki, I think her only real competition is Cardi. I don’t think anybody else is a threat to her sales wise, sales wise, sales wise. Nicki still sales. And she still she’s still packing them out in arenas. And Cardi is here to stay. We just want the second album. But also I think labels are done searching for the woman to sign. This wrapping, I think records are not selling as well as labels probably thought that they would sell. I was looking at some sales. I know bongos has 81 over 81 million streams, but Bongo didn’t have the staying power that what did. And I think that’s what the Labels and Megan and Cardi were banking on, that it would have the same impact and it didn’t necessarily have the same impact. People heard it and was like, oh, I don’t really like this. And we kind of just quit talking about it. Cardi has put out some other figures. They kind of had just fell flat. That whole record with with Lizzo extreme. Well, but like, we don’t hear that nowhere. We don’t really hear. You know it’s not didn’t go I don’t hear it in commercials. I don’t hear it when I go out nowhere. The same with the joint with her and Kanye and Lil Durk. That kind of came and went. Now does she have some joints this day? They got some tape out. Yeah, she does a whole remix with Lotto. Is is running it up. Still running the numbers up man. I think is also too much for a label to recoup dealing with a woman, which is what the knock was label said about signing women in the first place was that, yeah, we just cut it cost too much the hair to make up the wardrobe that cost too much when the records are not selling the way we need them to sell. I love Megan, I love me. I hold Megan’s sales really well now that she’s wish you Atlantic right.
Confucius Jones Yeah.
Fresh Knight I hope she sells really well, because the excuse of my label is not supporting me is now out the window. It is now out the window. You are being managed by ROC Nation. You were signed to a major label and all of this. And is one of a kind, first of its kind deal. If you still sell the same, then you just don’t sell well, which I think is cool in which also I think her make doing some way around. Like what, 60 to 80,000? I think that’s pretty good in streaming era. Yeah. Like it’s dudes who don’t mate who don’t sell 60 to 80,000 within the streaming era. But then you also look at a caller, Ray, who we try to still figure out what’s the disconnect. Why are you only selling 10,000 records, though, bro? Over here at this major, like, there’s two albums in You Ain’t Broke 25,001st week. So I’d be labels are looking at it like this is just not what we were looking for. We thought this would be a little, we would get a lot more out of this, and we would get our money back faster, because I do believe that somebody like a sweetie, I think that’s why the album hasn’t come out. I think the label is getting some money off of her brand deals, which is why she has so many, because they have to recoup their money for all the money that they have put into sweetie and still not having a debut album. And then she comes out and says, well, I didn’t, I didn’t put out. I hadn’t put out a debut album because the people don’t really rocking with the music because it’s not good. Sorry, love. Sorry. She seems like somebody with a wonderful personality. You could just kick it with. Go hang out with. But outside of that, the music in connected is not hidden, and nobody really seems to like it. So I think the label got word and they went out and got all of these brand deals with Hidden Valley Ranch and all of these people. And yeah, they getting a piece of that because we got to make our money back. You know, we got to get our money back. So yeah, I think because of those things I think that’s why the wave is near the end. Now what the when the end is coming, I can’t say Joe Biden, they hear a prophet and they he’s ahead of the time. But I think it’s a little it’s going to last a little longer. I just think they’re like, yeah, is. The time where the label is looking at like we can make. We can make this woman a star and get our money. Is that that’s that’s that’s coming to the end. Riding the wave is coming to an end, which is what the labels, the labels do. They write waves. And once they realize the label. Right, we’ve gotten all we can out of this. We’re done waiting and we’re pulling the cord. And I think that time is coming up. Will they be a year from now, two years now, five years from now? I think it’s coming up.
Confucius Jones Joe Biden so full of it. Because I want to show he’ll say, oh, there’s only seven artists getting attention. And like, this music thing is over. They don’t turn around and say, oh, well, the ladies about the way it’s about to be over. Shut up Joe. Joe Budden has gone into Joe Rogan territory where he says things to get a rise out of people, to get the clicks in the listeners.
Fresh Knight Definitely.
Confucius Jones And so I don’t really.
Fresh Knight Very performative.
Confucius Jones Because.
Fresh Knight I want to be clear, though. Yes, I got it from. It was inspired by Joe Budden, but looking at things myself through my scope is how I came up with the.
Confucius Jones To be fair, and I’m asking is not accusing. Do you listen to a lot of female rappers?
Fresh Knight I listen to quite a few. Well, looking.
Confucius Jones Back, I thought you’re gonna have some I.
Fresh Knight Oh, I’m.
Confucius Jones I’m talking about consistently. Not like in passing.
Fresh Knight Yeah, cause this is it. I listen to Flo. Milica, listen. I listen to rainy Rocky.
Confucius Jones Rainy Rocky.
Fresh Knight Yeah. She’s a female. What are we talking about, you ask? You didn’t say. Are you listening to the top tier one?
Confucius Jones You ever said, you know.
Fresh Knight Are you listening?
Confucius Jones You still put that music?
Fresh Knight You just put that Russo, you ass bro. Like.
Confucius Jones Flo Milli rainy. You okay?
Fresh Knight I give you what I did.
Confucius Jones That’s true.
Fresh Knight I listened to Megan.
Confucius Jones Okay. It’s three.
Fresh Knight All right. You know, I’m. You said it was okay.
Confucius Jones So, to be fair, women, female. And not for any reason. Not because they were women. But that’s the.
Fresh Knight Definition of war. I know you don’t know who Y is because you would say she’s. That she’s. Well, what do you call the two doughboy? Two doughboy artists? Oh, yeah.
Confucius Jones That’s what I’m saying. But they usually you go to.
Fresh Knight Yeah, they know they must part of our rotation.
Confucius Jones Yeah, but they forget.
Fresh Knight What? It’s not. What? It’s not work.
Confucius Jones I got 5000 people in my Spotify rotation. What?
Fresh Knight That means, my man on your daily podcast, bro. Your daily playlist on Spotify, or songs that are artists and songs you mainly listen to. It’d be the same song that the algorithm pushes to you and they are in there.
Confucius Jones It just seems because when I put together power, it seems that I’m usually finding women and adding them to it. Not saying you never have, but it seems like I usually come across the cars even with Cardi, but.
Fresh Knight You do also also in that argument. You curate power and I curate the first two. So yeah. You would put those in there?
Confucius Jones Yeah. But for power, it’s small. It’s mostly Nash. It was always national artist.
Fresh Knight So no local women in here?
Confucius Jones Yeah, yeah. Can I say that for you? Mainly my argument is that’s the whole. That’s a stupid argument. Not from you, from Joe. Because this whole thing, like Cardi needs to drop this year. Oh, she. That was what y’all going to do about I don’t.
Fresh Knight Say she needs to drop this year, but I do think I.
Confucius Jones Heard I heard Joe say that like she she basically all of them that stupid panel of men that’s on there. That she needs to drop by this year. This is just this is going to hurt her. No, it’s not. It’s not going to hurt her like Cardi wants.
Fresh Knight It hasn’t hurt her at up until this point. I don’t think another year or another two years especially.
Confucius Jones It the only way could hurt you. And this is what Nikki’s problem was for a while, was if your last album didn’t live up to expectations, then it’s on you to say, okay, I have to follow up with something else better. But Invasion of Privacy still gets play. A lot of.
Fresh Knight Play. That’s my thing with Cardi, though. I’m waiting for the second album because I don’t want Cardi B to fall and be relegated like Lauryn Hill to where when we finally get something from her, it’s like, yo, but is this Lauren’s problem?
Confucius Jones Was that Lauryn put out that album and then disappeared, right? God, he still puts out singles like True What? I think it’s the fastest song to diamond ever. So like, you brought up Bungie about this new well. But I mean.
Fresh Knight I mean, like I said, it says it’s sitting at over 81 million streams, but.
Confucius Jones And then maybe engaging.
Fresh Knight It after.
Confucius Jones It. And then Megan, this was number one. I think either she was the first female rapper to do that. And while I’ll be Cardi had a number one song.
Fresh Knight I would be, I would I’m not sure I don’t I’m not looking at the numbers, to be honest.
Confucius Jones And then Flo Milli never, never lose me as her biggest.
Fresh Knight You know, it tried it for the first time two weeks ago.
Confucius Jones And sexy rates to come. I still give Carly and Ken to me, and I still think they’re coming. I definitely agree to waves back to Ian, which once again, this is why Joe Budden annoys me. Because you would never say that about me at all. But I’d be awful to me and it’s bad to be over. Like, bro, don’t do that. Don’t don’t single out women.
Fresh Knight I do think drill. It’s time is up. Oh you drills, drill drills. Time is up over. I think drill music is over tomorrow. Whether you whether you be a man or woman. I think y’all over tomorrow. Yeah.
Confucius Jones I think I hate to say that, but drill is best. Hope was possible when he passed away.
Fresh Knight He’s got it. Yeah.
Confucius Jones I’m gonna start going down.
Fresh Knight That all? Y’all felt like some derivative of him.
Confucius Jones And I spice at. I’m rooting for my spice. But I hope she’s not taking too much advice from Nicki.
Fresh Knight That’s all I say. I’m root.
Confucius Jones I also like Mona Leo.
Fresh Knight I like Mona, but I like, can.
Confucius Jones I can maybe rap, I.
Fresh Knight Like, I like he and I’m rooting. I root for the Texas girls.
Confucius Jones And then I throw a Little Simz in there. And JT, I think JT is gonna do really well.
Fresh Knight I hope so.
Confucius Jones Cuz I think the city girls think it over.
Fresh Knight I think we all, I think I think we came on here like maybe a month or so ago and say that that was.
Confucius Jones I think that’s over the reason that at that last album they put that out like they didn’t want nothing to do with it.
Fresh Knight I like Sims, like I said, I’m root for the Texas girls. I just my point is, I think the labels are done searching for it. Everybody else that we have name is already here. Candyman is already here. Mona Leone is already. They are she already. She’s already is being. What I mean by already here is already consistently putting out music. She’s been featured on Double Exhale fresh me like she’s already.
Confucius Jones It’s like I’ll say this if we’re a label. If Millie was sitting at label right now and you came in and said, we’re going, we’re going to stop investing in women, my argument to you would be why, when they seem to be the only thing moving the algorithm in terms of like sales and popularity, because the men, it’s just the same ones Drake, J. Cole, Kendrick. But in terms of like signing new talent and name kind of catching on TikTok wise, it’s the women.
Fresh Knight And I as a label. I would say, well, we got this one over here. We got these two over here in and they not really bringing in the money that we were expecting them to bring in. At the end of the day, I think for a label it’s about the bottom line. And if that’s.
Confucius Jones What I’m saying.
Fresh Knight If we have to do all of these extra stuff to just recoup our money and it ain’t no, it ain’t none of this coming from what we brought them here for. Now, what do we need you here for, bro? Because at some point the brand deals are going to run out. No, but you’re not going to have that.
Confucius Jones That’s not the OG me think it is. Only because if we’re sitting at label and we say, do we have somebody closer to Doja Cat or somebody closer to Drake though? Don’t like Don’t Be Doja.
Fresh Knight Those is another one. I think he’s not going anywhere. She’s proved that.
Confucius Jones That’s what I’m saying. But labels look at that. They’ll look at a Megan or Cardi or Doja and say, we have more of a chance of building that up than we have a finding another Drake, a Kendrick, because they’re unicorns. Hell, I would argue Cardi B’s unicorn because nobody thought Cardi would be that big.
Fresh Knight I would argue that she’s a unicorn, but I wouldn’t argue that everyone after her is no.
Confucius Jones I’m just saying labels are looking more for that because that I feel for them. It’s easy to cultivate and grow outside of finding another Kendrick or Drake.
Fresh Knight Well, yeah, I would agree, but that’s why I say that the wave isn’t up next year. It ain’t going to be next year. They going to say I we’re not we’re not we’re not pushing another woman on it. I think it’s women sitting at the major labels that we just have not heard about, like flying out of Bose. They were just sitting over there at Atlantic until they decided to push their own stuff. And then they got hot. And now Atlantic got a big picture on the wall. And now Atlantic is pushing money behind them and getting them to Missy Elliott feature, I think. Yeah, we got one. We just trying to wait to see if they cultivate in manifest into something. If they don’t we could time but we not labels though.
Confucius Jones Labels do whatever they got artists.
Fresh Knight But I’m just saying I don’t think they are out actively searching for that anymore. I think if they got one, they got one. If they do whatever said whoever sitting over there, I don’t think we going to try to push this forward. And then, you know, five years, we’ll see.
Confucius Jones I think they’re going to keep doing I’m not saying they going to keep doing for another ten, but.
Fresh Knight I say five, five years. We’ll see. I give it another five years.
Confucius Jones I think it last longer.
Fresh Knight I think it’s another five years in DNA.
Confucius Jones I think I hate to say it, but I think it’s easy. You get a quick return on investment. Women do men because I could put a woman on there, have a dress sexy and then men. A god man can relate sex sales.
Fresh Knight Well, Dan was I was about to say I can’t even rule what I mean.
Confucius Jones Let’s go back to. Why do you think, sweetie, even though you have an album out, still has a career? Because he looks good.
Fresh Knight Yeah, it’s pretty privilege. It’s a it’s a it’s a it’s a thing. It’s a huge thing. I think that’s why I sold the brand deals. And I think.
Confucius Jones People love Playboi Carti.
Fresh Knight They get money off of it.
Confucius Jones People love Playboi Carti, but you get more traction with a sweetie on a on a posting about Playboi Carti. Yeah. So if I’m a label, I’m like, look, she might not be able to sell an album, but that brand is strong.
Fresh Knight So even with that. The brand is strong. Why not put out an album? We can get something off.
Confucius Jones Them saying, well, you ought to. I think you ought to answer that question. They get money after branding, so they’re like, you know what? The music’s not here. We can still get money. I put it in a sprite commercial.
Fresh Knight But you also can get more branding with a popping song.
Confucius Jones She had a pop best friend charted high with Doja in My Type.
Fresh Knight And I think that was more because of Doja than it was.
Confucius Jones My type, not my type. They went off.
Fresh Knight Into, in and then, but in the and it was it, that was it. And then we got best friend like what, three years later nothing.
Confucius Jones Came out like maybe a couple years later.
Fresh Knight Years later I give it five more years, man. I get it.
Confucius Jones Also, sweetie. To be fair, has more white audience because once again, I deejay Cross Street. They they love sweetie over there.
Fresh Knight Well, what I.
Confucius Jones In the is she real? Because I know she’s people.
Fresh Knight I would hope I would hope.
Confucius Jones They champion I think.
Fresh Knight I would hope she’s bigger there. Look, the white college girls like all of them. I learned that working for the county. And they like all of them.
Confucius Jones I just I don’t I don’t think Jo Jo generally talking about me.
Fresh Knight I’m just like I said, Jo.
Confucius Jones Jo Jo, I just don’t like. And once again, it’s nothing personal with you. I don’t like when you come in here and say, like what Joe Budden said, because Joe Budden is very biased, like when making hit number one. Oh, we know that’s one. That’s a label trap, bro. They’re all label trap. Here’s my take on having a career as a label trap. Like she’s like, what are you. Don’t do this, Joe. Every time woman does something inside of you. I don’t know about that, Joe. You should not be speaking anything related to it.
Fresh Knight Which is why, considering.
Confucius Jones Your.
Fresh Knight Past. Which is why I tried to stay away from saying Joe Biden’s name. Because I knew you would point to that.
Confucius Jones You know, I was go see.
Fresh Knight It and make it. But I know you were pointed it it make it seem like all of this is just based off. It’s not all of it’s based off.
Confucius Jones What was it with the process for? You heard him say it.
Fresh Knight More or less. Okay. More or less. More or less. I was looking just like you said. It’s the same men. I was looking at it like, well, I’m only seeing the same women pushed. I’m only seeing Megan. I’m only seeing lotto. I’m only seeing Cardi. I’m only seeing Little Simz. I know.
Confucius Jones Sex really good push, really hard.
Fresh Knight And sexy rate.
Confucius Jones I’m only six year rows last year though, bro.
Fresh Knight And I’ll give her that. But I’m only seeing them and I spice I’m only seeing I’m not seeing all of these other women now. Maybe it’s because how many.
Confucius Jones Do you want?
Fresh Knight How many do you want? You say the wave and stop. And how many do you want?
Confucius Jones No, but I’m saying you’re bringing up. Okay. The Latinos, the Megan’s, these girls come and last 5 or 6 years, but the last year you have Ice Spice and sexy red. So you’re still getting replenishing of artist.
Fresh Knight And I’m 2024 has yet to be somebody. So we’ll see. We’re in March. And your point is you want music these days moves fast.
Confucius Jones But yeah stars don’t come around every like that. If anything, I’d maybe give you talent, but that’s more.
Fresh Knight I can’t tell. They start. Don’t come around like that in this day and age. I can’t, I can’t. It seems like every other day somebody is made into this idea. Making somebody into a star.
Confucius Jones Yeah. Don’t let TikTok fool you. I’m talking about, like, people like like a tie. Like I said, bro.
Fresh Knight Which is why I said not name the ones that I see a lot. Oh, a flow Millie, a Megan a Cardi, ice spice. I don’t know, I suppose I put her over there off to the side or stars and they are here to stay. Doja is a star, despite how we may feel, despite the weird stuff she does online. She’s a star, and I think all of that stay. I think she knows what she’s doing. I think she does all the weird stuff on purpose. She know y’all going to talk about it, but I think those are bona fide stars. It has been proven that they are bona fide stars and they are not going anywhere despite their sales. They aren’t going anywhere. I just think the label isn’t going out to try to find and make a new star. If we got one sitting over here that we have not pushed and put money behind. Well, let’s see what they can do. Once we do that. If not, we’re going to sever ties. And like you said, that’s a label. That’s what they can do with everybody. But I just don’t think like the label is just gung ho on trying to find and create or find the next new female rap star. We got some. We got them already. Let’s just keep dumping money into them like they do to dudes.
Confucius Jones That I think can keep looking.
Fresh Knight I think the ones we named are the ones that are going to stay up there, and those are the ones we are going to continue to see.
Confucius Jones But yeah, as a label, you don’t stop signing orders. If you have no.
Fresh Knight You don’t stop signing.
Confucius Jones Got caught and stop right there. You know, you know, they want 5 or 6 Cortez.
Fresh Knight No, you don’t stop saying no but you ain’t go get 5 or 6 cause.
Confucius Jones They don’t know that.
Fresh Knight Man, I need Cardi.
Confucius Jones You know what? Def jam signed Jay-Z, Ja Rule and DMX in the 90s where you got stop. But DMX, you know, we got it.
Fresh Knight We also and they also could have been had Jay-Z and then had then signed Jay-Z. Jay-Z had to go get hot and then got over there. Def Jam yeah.
Confucius Jones I’m saying but man, to have they stop to say they wouldn’t need nobody else. We good here DMX. All we.
Fresh Knight Need they could have if.
Confucius Jones They didn’t know, but they.
Fresh Knight Could have if they had Jay before they had. Hey they could have, they could have said that and been.
Confucius Jones But we’re not doing the what ifs.
Fresh Knight They probably would have been better off doing that. Just pushing them. Could look at Def Jam now.
Confucius Jones That’s good. They can’t keep no they about.
Fresh Knight Look at Def Jam now like they don’t know what they doing over there. We only know who the president is. Is Paul still in over there.
Confucius Jones You see him.
Fresh Knight Look at that. Look at that. He got that two minutes. Where right now. Right now we here to get informed, man. And entertain with Confucius reads the news.
Confucius Jones Yeah, man. You know, news time we shared more notes about state of the Union, but I don’t, unfortunately. But y’all saw it. You know, to be.
Fresh Knight Honest, I didn’t.
Confucius Jones I don’t watch all of it, but I didn’t.
Fresh Knight I didn’t even realize he was.
Confucius Jones On it, so. But at this point, I’m glad to have to watch it for the theatrics because, you know, I mean, why not? There was a time when they know the president, no matter what party could go there, and everybody would listen. They might not agree to stand up everything. But they now these everybody’s yelling at each other now. So, man, apparently, speaker of the House Mike Johnson had a meeting close to a meeting with Republicans and told me they come down on the heckler, but it.
Fresh Knight Didn’t. It didn’t work.
Confucius Jones It’s not gonna.
Fresh Knight Work. Wild.
Confucius Jones It didn’t work. Yeah, not at all.
Fresh Knight America.
Confucius Jones Nikki Haley ended her campaign this week. Remain after she suffered a slew of losses on Super Tuesday. For those who don’t know a Super Tuesday, it’s that time in the primaries with all the states with most a lot of different states all voted. Once in Texas was one of those. I’m pretty sure y’all didn’t vote because most people come out for primaries like that. But Joe Biden won Texas 87%, which if you probably factor in Ken Paxton cheating, he probably got about 93, 94%.
Fresh Knight To 87% in Texas.
Confucius Jones Yeah.
Fresh Knight All the liberal counties.
Confucius Jones Yeah, exactly what it was. So that makes Donald Trump. He is the last man standing on the Republican side at the surprise of nobody.
Fresh Knight Nobody.
Confucius Jones Nikki Haley did not immediately endorse Donald Trump. She didn’t kiss the ring like everybody else did.
Fresh Knight Good for Nikki. That up.
Confucius Jones She basically came out and said that. It is on Trump to convince her supporters to go to his side.
Fresh Knight I’m not bad at it.
Confucius Jones I’m not bad and I’m bad at it.
Fresh Knight Bad.
Confucius Jones It was always gonna be a hard road for a once you the woman. Women in politics, especially the presidential level, don’t always forget. The higher.
Fresh Knight You go, the higher position you seek as a woman, the harder it gets.
Confucius Jones His order intelligently. But she joined Chris Christie as being the two people that didn’t. They dropped out and didn’t endorse Donald Trump.
Fresh Knight Good for them.
Confucius Jones Yeah.
Fresh Knight No, I agree because your Tinto’s no split.
Confucius Jones Yeah. Because yeah, you can’t you can’t campaign against me and turn around. You know what? He just the best thing ever. But now we’re not doing that. Nikki Haley work for him.
Fresh Knight We don’t believe you anymore, people.
Confucius Jones So now we’re left with seemingly happy dementia, having Trump as the nominee. And before y’all going to drop, I got to meet you. Hey, man. Look, they said Reagan thought that the night with Nancy Reagan. Trump’s bad to be worse. Y’all get back. And if you won’t do I say what I said. Ronald Reagan is the greatest public president. Y’all said Alzheimer’s towards the end.
Fresh Knight Look, man, they said Jimmy Carter was in there seeing polka dotted rabbits in the Oval Office.
Confucius Jones Jimmy. God was. I was all it were, you recall, call it that smokey that we.
Fresh Knight He had to be.
Confucius Jones In other news, the turtle’s failing their job in New York City because the National Guard is in the subways after a string of violent crimes.
Fresh Knight Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait what? Read that again for me.
Confucius Jones I said the, National Guard is in the subways after a string of violent crimes. And before that, I said the turtles are doing their job.
Fresh Knight Oh, that’s what I wanted to hear.
Confucius Jones And what you got going on, Master Splinter? But the teenagers are slacking. I want to be protected by the dirty.
Fresh Knight Little age old man, but. Oh, teenage.
Confucius Jones 1585. But yeah. Governor Kathy Hochul announced plans this past Wednesday to send the National Guard to the New York City subway system to help police conduct random searches of riders bags for weapons, including a series following a series of high profile crimes on city trains. This is according to the AP news honcho, who, who’s a Democrat, said she would deploy 750 members of the National Guard to the subways to assist the New York Police Department with bag checks at entrances to these train stations. Never saw Spiderman in the train, so I’d kind of make sense why that would be a crime area.
Fresh Knight I have a I have a question.
Confucius Jones Go ahead.
Fresh Knight Do you know how bad it is? Like number wise.
Confucius Jones Inside? The trains?
Fresh Knight Yeah. Percentage of crime risen in the increase of crime rising in the subway, on the trains and in the tunnels. Cause I only ask because I think.
Confucius Jones Well, crime has dropped in New York since Covid.
Fresh Knight But you just rising in the train. On the train? Well, it’s.
Confucius Jones Just this stuff keeps happening. And she ran just like most people, most politicians ran on trying to reduce crime.
Fresh Knight Well, they just let me know. Nobody else has ever cared because I think for like most of our lives, we’ve heard that the trains in New York are a horrible place to be. It’s like sexual assault going on and everybody getting smarter. I think every other day we see a video of somebody getting beat up on the subway in New York.
Confucius Jones Yeah, a part of me thinks that it was more of a reaction because they said it was an incident where a passenger slashed another passenger with a knife. And I think a lot of that is just, you know, her reaction to and say, look, I’m doing what I can because imagine signing up for National Guard and next thing you know, yeah, I’m down here checking bags in subway.
Fresh Knight Room like this.
Confucius Jones It’s not even.
Fresh Knight Yeah, I here paying people down before they get on a train. That was wild. It’s not what I signed up for.
Confucius Jones So you remember. During that time of George Floyd. The chants of defund the police. Joe Biden, did the state of you I think his first one, he got there and said we must not defund the police, we must fund the police. And everybody’s out clapping whatever. And you know, for a while Republicans ran on the whole premise of Amen. Democrats tried and, you know, they tried to defund the police.
Fresh Knight Like trying to make it worse, I recall, I recall.
Confucius Jones Well, Republicans in Congress have passed a bill that defunds the police, FBI, CIA.
Fresh Knight You gotta love them, man. You gotta love them, man.
Confucius Jones Yeah. The bill provides $58.7 billion of tax cuts. But the defund law enforcement, eliminating thousands of federal agents, analysts and procedural positions gutted the EDA, which the Economic Development Administration.
Fresh Knight Of course they did.
Confucius Jones And they also took money away from the Minority Business Development Agency.
Fresh Knight Of course it did.
Confucius Jones So, yeah, Republicans obviously, I’m I don’t care. You know how you feel when I say this. They were like law enforcement gonna go after Trump. When it’s when it’s everybody else. Hey, we need more police when minorities come in. Crime? Yep. Need more police. Crime is getting bad. But when Trump gets gets 91 indictments. Wait, wait a minute. Now, elder is. It’s the law enforcement branch in this country is running wild.
Fresh Knight I also notice how you say they defunding the federal agencies, the CIA, the FBI, all of them. Right. And also the agency for minority businesses in the environment. Where are we going to take money away from our people? We want to take the money away from these people, too. Yep. Like I there’s a scene real convenient to me.
Confucius Jones Yeah, I just don’t understand. Republicans don’t really have a platform to run on, except that we just. We love Trump. So please, you know, do we can’t help him because we already love him.
Fresh Knight Please vote.
Confucius Jones He tried to put his daughter in charge RNC and she had to say anybody done sport. Trump is not getting any money or you know, basically use the RNC to help fund all his legal problems. He tried to have a stay in his New York case, lawyers trying to argue that he needs more time to come with the money because Trump just didn’t have the money.
Fresh Knight Is that legal? Can you do that?
Confucius Jones Yeah. If you have enough money, you.
Fresh Knight Can take the R and the money from the law. I’m. I gotta look that up.
Confucius Jones But but to find.
Fresh Knight Out, you probably learned it and I probably learned it in class, but like and I said wow. America.
Confucius Jones America. Ted Cruz finally has his match up with Colin. I’ll read later this year. This is the most voted Ted Cruz has been since he won against Bato. Ted Cruz lots by just like most senators do, by just name recognition that people just vote because they know who he is.
Fresh Knight Rafael.
Confucius Jones Yeah. Forget the name. Ted Cruz hadn’t done jack squat for Texas since he’s been here.
Fresh Knight Most Texas senators.
Confucius Jones So do I think Colin Allred will beat him? No. Mainly because as long as Ken Paxton, the attorney general. And if y’all think I’m Black, Ken Paxton came out himself and said Biden would have won Texas had it not been for me. I don’t know what else that what what else that’s supposed to mean?
Fresh Knight Me?
Confucius Jones I don’t know what else that’s supposed to mean. So yeah, I don’t think in fact, it’s going to.
Fresh Knight I mean, you know, also, I think Ken Paxton has shown that he’s pretty corrupt.
Confucius Jones If anything, John Cornyn might have a chance to lose him again. Patsy going at it on Twitter.
Fresh Knight John Cornyn been in there over almost 30 years and ended up and did nothing for the state of Texas.
Confucius Jones Yeah, they’ve had nothing for a year, did nothing for nobody except yourself.
Fresh Knight So I’m going a bit of that since I got out of elementary.
Confucius Jones My facts, he barely made it all right. Said, I’m proud of being the most bipartisan member of the Texas delegation, that because bipartisanship in and of itself is the goal, but because getting things done is the goal. Collin, I love you, bro. I am rooting for you. But I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to Republicans in this nation, period. They don’t really care to work with anybody. So you have fun with that. I get it. You’re in Texas and you can’t be too extreme on one side. I mean left at least because it’s not. And we better at that talking about banning going to take what you take with my guns. No, not my guns. Hey, killing all of them said. Nope, not my guns.
Fresh Knight So I got a deal. Rebels man.
Confucius Jones We’re not doing that. I root for bipartisanship. But once again, when you have a party that is more focused on making sure Trump stays out of prison than actually trying to run the country, then yeah, I don’t have a lot of faith that happening.
Fresh Knight This will be interesting.
Confucius Jones I will say that if you don’t believe me, look at the House of Representatives. They don’t know what they do it over there. They ain’t pass nothing. So that is “Confucius Reads the News”.
Confucius Jones This episode of The Breaks podcast is a production of KUTX 98.9, The Austin Music Experience. You can listen to the Breaks radio show every Saturday night from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.. This podcast is produced by Confucius Jones, Fresh Knight and Elizabeth McQueen with editing help from Jack Anderson. Additional production help provided by Zahra Crim. You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter. We are at TheBreaksKUTX and you can find more episodes at KUTX forward slash The Breaks. Our theme song is by Austin artist Deezie Brown.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
