Embarking on a profound exploration of the multifaceted artistry of Brian Cross, also known as B+, this episode delves into his pivotal contributions to the realms of hip hop and DJ photography. As we dissect his significant works, we illuminate the intricate interplay between music and visual narrative, particularly focusing on his celebrated projects such as the Keeping Time and Brazilian Time documentaries. We will traverse the vibrant landscape of hip hop culture, examining notable moments like the Beat Battle between Will I Am and Thess One, while also paying homage to a luminary like J Dilla through the Sweet for My Dukes project, an endeavor that transcends mere tribute to achieve a resonant eulogy. Our discourse invites DJs and enthusiasts alike to engage with the sonic and visual tapestry that B+ has masterfully woven, promising insights that are as enlightening as they are entertaining. Prepare to immerse yourself in a conversation that is not only a celebration of artistry but also a testament to the enduring impact of hip hop culture on visual storytelling.
Transcripts
Speaker A:
Welcome back to Want A dj.
Speaker A:
In the second part of the B interview, we're going to have a deep dive on some of Brian's important work within and around hip hop and DJ culture.
Speaker A:
So we talk about Will I Am versus Thess one and the Root Down Beat Battle Baboof versus Paul Humphrey and more around the Keeping Time documentary and then the Brazilian Time documentary.
Speaker A:
We talk music versus photography, more sort of abstractly, and then the opportunity to eulogise a legend like Diller with the Sweet for Mar Dukes project.
Speaker A:
And yeah, so there's loads more to get into.
Speaker A:
So get strapped in and I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker B:
Oh, that was nice.
Speaker A:
So when I was doing all my research, there's just, as I said to you the other day, there's just so much work.
Speaker A:
There's two, like, you know, you.
Speaker A:
We could probably like pull up five pictures randomly from ghost notes, for example, and talk about them for an hour.
Speaker A:
So there's probably more, a few more specific things I'd like to ask you about around projects I'm a bit more familiar with.
Speaker A:
Just before I do, though, when did you start DJing?
Speaker A:
At what, @ what point in life?
Speaker B:
I was not really covered that DJing since I was in Ireland.
Speaker B:
So like 88, basically, you know, I came back to Ireland with a bunch of records and started trying to play them.
Speaker A:
So is that after that trip to America?
Speaker B:
Yeah, it's the first time I really DJ.
Speaker B:
Really?
Speaker B:
I think can't remember DJing before that, but yeah.
Speaker A:
Did you over all this time we've been talking about, were you DJing out and about a bit or was it just pure photography?
Speaker B:
Mostly photography.
Speaker B:
Although in the mid-90s, there was this amazing guy who was the first road manager of Wu Tang and who ran this sort of historic club in LA called Unity called Bill o' Brin, or Bigger B as he was known.
Speaker B:
And he was one of the first cats that was just like, come on, man.
Speaker B:
Because of how I grew up and because I didn't really, you know, I mean, I didn't really know the background.
Speaker B:
My thing was like, okay, it was, it was actually quite difficult to find new hip hop vinyl in those days.
Speaker B:
In fairness, you could find CDs and cassettes easy.
Speaker B:
Vinyl was challenging.
Speaker B:
You kind of had to have a hookup.
Speaker B:
So I would buy whatever I could.
Speaker B:
But my thing was like, I, I, I, I took it upon myself to do the research and to find.
Speaker B:
I became engaged with the sample culture.
Speaker B:
So it was like I was always interested in like, you know, which Crusaders record did they Touch or.
Speaker B:
Which, you know, I didn't even know about.
Speaker B:
I was.
Speaker B:
I remember the Shadow told me, like, you know, stay away from the bootlegs and the compilations, man.
Speaker B:
Just try to buy records.
Speaker B:
Just really try to support things, you know, don't try to support the.
Speaker B:
And, yeah, I kind of did that, but I also, you know, whatever.
Speaker B:
Like, if there's a shortcut, it.
Speaker B:
You know what I mean?
Speaker B:
Like, I just want to know.
Speaker B:
Yeah, if I find the record, then great.
Speaker B:
But at least now I know what I'm.
Speaker B:
What the record is, you know, so, you know.
Speaker B:
But the.
Speaker B:
So ultimate Breaks and Beats came much, much later.
Speaker B:
I. I never bought Ulta.
Speaker B:
I've never actually gone out there into the world and bought a full set of ultimate breaks and beats, even though I am by now a good friend, I would say, of breakbeat.
Speaker B:
Lou, much respect, Lou, love you.
Speaker B:
But so I just was out there just buying records, and then if I would ever find something that was the.
Speaker B:
The og, I was terrible for being like, bro, just come in the house.
Speaker B:
Let me just show you this record, you know.
Speaker B:
And so Bill was like, man, you know, there was a.
Speaker B:
It was like a wine bar on La Cienega, and he was just like, you know, every Thursday night, man, chill vibes.
Speaker B:
We're just gonna, you know, play the jams.
Speaker B:
And I was just like, okay.
Speaker B:
So I would DJ there with him.
Speaker B:
And that started me.
Speaker B:
And then.
Speaker B:
And then, you know, by the late 90s, I started hanging out with a group of cats that were younger than me.
Speaker B:
Eric Coleman is one of them, the cat I ended up working with.
Speaker B:
But there was a group around them that started this club called Firecracker.
Speaker B:
And it was kind of.
Speaker B:
Yeah, I mean, it was for.
Speaker B:
For us, it was kind of the first sort of 360 kind of DJing where you just kind of, you know, whatever you felt was the right thing, you played it.
Speaker B:
And I would play with them from time to time, obviously, like Root down and Miles and Cut Chemist and DJ Dusk and all them dudes were kind of an influence.
Speaker B:
And, well, I was always.
Speaker B:
It was always the kind of thing, if you came to my house, I would.
Speaker B:
I was playing you records, and I was never really consider myself a dj.
Speaker B:
I'm much more of a selector style guy.
Speaker B:
Like, I play records.
Speaker B:
Am I a dj?
Speaker B:
I'm not so sure about that.
Speaker B:
But I play records.
Speaker B:
And then I've always kind of prided myself on turning things up.
Speaker B:
And then I'm obviously a lot of times in the company of people who are very good at Turning things up.
Speaker B:
Shadow, obviously.
Speaker B:
Dante Carfagna, Cut, new mark.
Speaker A:
You know, see, Dante's just one of those names I've heard and read about every now and again.
Speaker A:
Just seems like a bit of almost like a, Like a mythical sort of.
Speaker A:
He is being.
Speaker B:
He is.
Speaker B:
He is a mythical being.
Speaker B:
He's also one of the funniest people I know.
Speaker B:
I mean, and he's also, you know, as far as having the, the right set of neurodivergences to be able to do this sustained level at the sort of high sustained level that he's done it for Ash for, For, you know, over this many years.
Speaker B:
He's kind of extraordinary, you know what I mean?
Speaker B:
You know, obviously Josh, another person.
Speaker B:
Like, you know, I remember meeting them dudes in the 90s.
Speaker B:
I mean, I, I knew Josh before, but I remember digging with them in the mid 90s, and they.
Speaker B:
This is the mid 90s, and they were just looking for things they'd never seen before.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
And I was just like.
Speaker B:
Like things I've never seen before is basically everything to me.
Speaker B:
Whereas to them it's like this ever declining, you know, and then they're different.
Speaker B:
They're very different in the sense that Dante is obviously knows about everything, but has very specific things that he collects.
Speaker B:
And then Josh is a much more broad.
Speaker B:
There isn't anything I can think of really any country music, but, you know, he's kind of knows about it.
Speaker B:
You know, he's.
Speaker B:
Is every aspect of it.
Speaker B:
He knows.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
So, you know, I'm just lucky to be around cats like that.
Speaker B:
Lucky to be around cast like that to kind of affirm certain things.
Speaker B:
You know, if somebody really brings a record to you and makes a point of showing you the record, there's a very high likelihood that that record's about to show up for you.
Speaker B:
And I've had this happen over and over again.
Speaker B:
I mean, just happened in Brazil right now.
Speaker B:
Somebody showed me this Tino Contreras record that I'd never seen.
Speaker B:
That's extraordinary.
Speaker B:
And it's quite rare, and it wasn't even that expensive.
Speaker B:
But the guy at the store was filling it so much more than me that I was like, nah, dude, you need to take this record home, bro.
Speaker B:
This record is making you so happy.
Speaker B:
You should have it.
Speaker B:
And then I went to Brazil and then this guy presented me some records, and bingo, there it was.
Speaker B:
What the fuck that Mexican record is doing in Brazil?
Speaker B:
I have no idea.
Speaker B:
But somehow people, by virtue of the fact that the guy had, you know, I, I, I.
Speaker B:
One time I Remember asking, Josh, you tell me, you know, currently, what's your favorite record?
Speaker B:
And this is long before the reissue game, but was Lyman Woodard, Saturday Night Special.
Speaker B:
Very rare Strata east record.
Speaker B:
Very rare, but rare.
Speaker B:
And that night, you know, he played it for me and it was, of course, Tobacco Road, like, Out of Control.
Speaker B:
Good song.
Speaker B:
He was, this record is so good, I don't want to sample it.
Speaker B:
And I was like, dude, I've never heard you say that about anything, but okay.
Speaker B:
And then that night, we went to a record store in Davis, California, where he was living.
Speaker B:
I mean, Davis, California.
Speaker B:
And we were digging, and we were digging shoulder to shoulder.
Speaker B:
He was standing there, I'm standing here, and bang, there it is.
Speaker B:
Find a Woodard.
Speaker A:
And he was.
Speaker B:
He couldn't believe it.
Speaker B:
He was just shook, like, really shook, you know.
Speaker B:
And I mean, I was, you know, but it's just one of them things.
Speaker B:
Like, there's a certain kind of karmic or spiritual aspect to digging that if you put in enough hours, things come, you know, I mean, it's just.
Speaker B:
That's the way it goes.
Speaker A:
I'll tell you something, though, that's something I hate about digging, is being on the receiving end of that, being the person next to the person that pulls it out.
Speaker A:
I mean, I'm not talking anything like that.
Speaker A:
I'm talking getting up on a morning, on a Sunday morning, going around to pick up a mate, going to the car boot sale, taking him with you, and then he pulls something out and you're just like, ah.
Speaker A:
I just can't help being annoyed.
Speaker B:
I. Yeah, I just.
Speaker B:
You have to love it.
Speaker B:
I mean, because for me, generally, number one, if it's your mate, to see your mate be that hyped about something, to me is the.
Speaker B:
Yeah, I'm hyped too.
Speaker A:
Like, it's nice, but I'd be happier if I had it.
Speaker B:
No, you have to lose that bit, though.
Speaker B:
To lose that bit.
Speaker B:
And then the second thing is, now that he's found it and we know it and I've had an opportunity to, To.
Speaker B:
To hear it properly, it gives me two things.
Speaker B:
One, I know where I can always find a copy of it as he has it.
Speaker B:
And two, now I really know what.
Speaker B:
How good or bad it is, so I can add it to my mental list.
Speaker B:
So I'm always, yeah, man, if you found something great, I'm just like, raffle.
Speaker B:
You believe that?
Speaker B:
That he found.
Speaker B:
That's amazing.
Speaker B:
That's the story I can tell too, man.
Speaker B:
I was standing right there next to him and there he Was bang, he pulled what.
Speaker A:
So let's just go back to a couple of things that you mentioned then.
Speaker A:
So you talked about the root down, and if I'm correct, you did you Film Fest 1 and Will.
Speaker A:
I am Battle.
Speaker B:
I did, yes.
Speaker A:
Okay.
Speaker A:
So I find it, obviously, we all know Will's arc and his journey and what he's become, how successful and everything.
Speaker A:
And, you know, he was.
Speaker A:
He was in that scene at the time.
Speaker A:
I think that Battle is really interesting to watch, because when I was younger and I watched it, I just thought, oh, God, this one murdered him.
Speaker A:
And that seemed like that was the sentiment in the building.
Speaker A:
And Will's there, like, you know, this one's just got like, his npc.
Speaker A:
Will's there with, like, some giant tower and like a cog Triton or something.
Speaker A:
But then you watch the battle again now, and you think about what Will was doing and kind of seems quite ahead of its time with some of this stuff.
Speaker A:
So, like, he.
Speaker A:
He's doing the sort of Middle Eastern thing, and I had Newmark on here a while ago, and he was talking about kind of it taking his mum to be like, yeah, you need to be doing this Middle Eastern stuff.
Speaker A:
And.
Speaker A:
And, like, Will was kind of like, seemed like he was ahead of the time on.
Speaker A:
Ahead of his time on that.
Speaker A:
So it'd be really interesting to kind of hear your take of.
Speaker B:
No, you're.
Speaker A:
Land him.
Speaker B:
Your.
Speaker B:
Your take on it is.
Speaker B:
Is the take in the room, which is that, you know, for one, Thess had brought a bunch of homies.
Speaker B:
I can't remember what Will said at the.
Speaker B:
The fourth or fifth round.
Speaker B:
He said, man, this has to be the last round because I got to go back to the studio with Justin Timberlake or somebody, which was just kind of like, you know, I've been saying that in the root down, in fairness, was like, you know, falling on your sword or something.
Speaker B:
You know what I mean?
Speaker B:
It was just like, yeah, why you.
Speaker B:
Are you kidding me?
Speaker B:
That's the enemy.
Speaker B:
But I have to say that.
Speaker B:
And.
Speaker B:
And then I remember talking to folks afterwards, and people were like, it was interesting.
Speaker B:
The fact that Will took off his shirt was a sign that he was losing.
Speaker B:
I was kind of like, I didn't understand that either.
Speaker B:
In fairness and.
Speaker B:
And with all due respect to this, who's a producer I love, and somebody who's, you know, contributed a huge amount to the scene out here.
Speaker B:
And with all due respect to him, he did a phenomenal job of doing a kind of impeccable description of where the.
Speaker B:
You know, where the culture was at.
Speaker B:
In that moment really.
Speaker B:
And I mean the culture meaning that kind of fat beats driven underground independent hip hop that people under the Stairs so perfectly described.
Speaker B:
He did an, you know, as, as to, you know, in that realm, that was as good a performance as I think I've seen.
Speaker B:
He really sat down and I forget what the name of that machine was.
Speaker B:
Like the first drum machine ever made a beat out of that.
Speaker B:
And you know what I'm saying, like, really took things that.
Speaker B:
He even took a sample that Will, I am, had touched and flipped it another way.
Speaker B:
You know, I mean, he, he really was like, you know, in the, in the, in the realm of, of.
Speaker B:
Of, you know, from premier to.
Speaker B:
To.
Speaker B:
To.
Speaker B:
To alchemist to.
Speaker B:
You know, I mean, that realm.
Speaker B:
He, he did an amazing job.
Speaker B:
But to me, the other guy walloped them.
Speaker B:
He absolutely walloped him in terms of the fidelity of the music, in terms of the creativity of what was being brought to the table.
Speaker B:
As much as everybody wanted to hate that he deliberately, you know, they, it wasn't like they didn't know what the other one was doing.
Speaker B:
There was all kinds of spying and subterfuge going on and oh, this fool's gonna bring the oldest drum machine.
Speaker B:
Well, I'm gonna bring a big ass tower and a huge, the biggest screen out of the studio.
Speaker B:
He didn't need to do that.
Speaker B:
Well, you know, I mean, it was a, there was a, an argument being made in real time.
Speaker B:
There was, it was two rhetorical forces facing each other.
Speaker B:
One which is about, you know, investing in a certain kind of tradition, and the other which was about actually facing forward, obviously.
Speaker B:
And this is Will, you know, I mean, Will is profoundly invested in technology and you know what I mean?
Speaker B:
But I have to say in that sound on that night, to me, and I was definitely in the minority, the majority was with you.
Speaker B:
And your first take on it Will fucking killed him.
Speaker A:
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:
And what's funny is it wasn't Middle Eastern, it's a, it's an Indian, it's a Bollywood thing that he sampled that last beat.
Speaker A:
Right, right.
Speaker B:
Is he.
Speaker B:
He never managed to clear the sample and it was just sitting around.
Speaker B:
And he said at one point when we were putting out the dvd, he was like, you know, if you want to put that out just as a white label to help promote the dvd, I'd be happy to give you the, the file.
Speaker B:
And of course I was like, oh, bro, come on.
Speaker B:
But then, whatever, you know, then he went on tour with Janet Jackson.
Speaker B:
I don't know what the.
Speaker B:
He did you know, he just went off into the world of, you know, and we never got the file.
Speaker B:
But I mean, two extra.
Speaker B:
I mean, those were.
Speaker B:
All three of those battles were extraordinary in their own way, you know.
Speaker B:
And the Mad Library Chemist 1, you.
Speaker A:
Know, I've not seen that.
Speaker B:
Oh no, there's a DVD with three.
Speaker B:
So the first one is.
Speaker B:
Is Mad Lib Chemist.
Speaker B:
And basically how it happened, and I'll just be dead ass honest with you, like 100.
Speaker B:
How this, the fluke of that thing happening is that basically Eric and I had bought PC1 hundreds.
Speaker B:
They were the new Sony Prosumer single chip, super tiny video cameras.
Speaker B:
So we both went to the first one, which was Cut Chemist versus Mad Lib.
Speaker B:
And he ended up on the Cut Chemist side and I ended up on the Mad Lib side.
Speaker B:
And we both shot.
Speaker B:
And it was extraordinary.
Speaker B:
It was really magical.
Speaker B:
And Dusk was great, was his idea, you know, the idea of a sound clash.
Speaker B:
And afterward.
Speaker B:
And then of course, we drank and smoke weed, whatever.
Speaker B:
And then.
Speaker B:
And then afterwards, I dropped him home and I went in to smoke one with him.
Speaker B:
And he was just like, let's just rewind the.
Speaker B:
You know, they had the little articulated monitor on the side.
Speaker B:
Let's rewind the two tapes.
Speaker A:
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:
And let's see if we can line them up and we'll just hit play and run them side by side.
Speaker B:
You know, the two screens side by side.
Speaker B:
And we started to watch him, we were like, dude, it was kind of crazy that, like, when he would move, I would move.
Speaker B:
When he would go tight, I would go wide.
Speaker B:
When I would go, you know, tight, he would go wide.
Speaker B:
It had its own kind of poetry to it.
Speaker B:
And I re.
Speaker B:
I was like, dude, this word, this is.
Speaker B:
We're onto something here, you know.
Speaker B:
And so then the next one.
Speaker B:
The next one was this versus Will.
Speaker B:
And then the third one was Ono versus Exile, which was another kind of wow.
Speaker B:
Kind of extraordinary.
Speaker B:
I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, peak.
Speaker B:
Peak beast, you know, Beat Scene, LA Beat Scene or whatever.
Speaker B:
And then at some point later, we were like, you know, God, we should just put the three of these things together and make a fucking DVD and just put it out.
Speaker B:
So we got everybody's permission, everybody's cool, we just did it.
Speaker A:
And was that effectively the.
Speaker A:
The genesis of Mochilla then?
Speaker B:
No, mochilla started in 97, right?
Speaker B:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
When we were working on the High Noon video for DJ Shadow.
Speaker B:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
So.
Speaker B:
But the Chemist Mad Lib one was.
Speaker B:
It was a lot.
Speaker B:
I mean, in effect, what these things are.
Speaker B:
And I mean, I guess, you know, this is what sound clashes are about anyway is like they're about their rhetorical arguments about philosophical approaches.
Speaker B:
You know, Mad Lib, obviously maximalist, out of control play 1B.
Speaker B:
Then he plays six.
Speaker B:
You know, chemist totally exemplary DJ producer performance, you know, with all the tricks and all the, you know, and.
Speaker B:
But then here comes Mad Lib with four times more music and a lot of it is banging, you know, I mean, really banging.
Speaker B:
And of course it's Mad Lib, so he's hiding and the opposite, you know, and then the, the, the interesting thing about the Ono versus Exile one to me, and this is something about the beat scene that I really, I really liked about that period.
Speaker B:
The, the pre Kanye moment is that they were both bigging up the other one more than them.
Speaker B:
You know what I mean?
Speaker B:
They were both like, nah, you got it, you got it, you killed it.
Speaker B:
No, it was you.
Speaker B:
No, it was you.
Speaker B:
There's something kind of very, yeah, sort of self effacing and kind of beautiful and on, you know, honorific about it.
Speaker B:
Like.
Speaker B:
Ono is amazing.
Speaker B:
Exile is amazing.
Speaker B:
Ono knows Exile is amazing.
Speaker B:
Exile knows Ono is amazing.
Speaker B:
And this is an opportunity for them to kind of beat each other up more than to compete.
Speaker B:
But, but the most kind of controversial one really was the.
Speaker B:
I mean, the room was alive.
Speaker B:
I mean, I've filmed quite a number of the world clashes, you know, REGGAE sound clashes.
Speaker B:
I filmed quite a few of them because the, the world, There's a world clash at sea on the welcome to Jamrock Reggae Cruise.
Speaker B:
They have a clash every year and there'll be three or four sounds go against each other, usually four, sometimes five.
Speaker B:
And inevitably, if you had a good night, it ends in controversy.
Speaker B:
I mean, there's no, it's just gonna be like, no, he didn't, he didn't know the other guy got it.
Speaker B:
No, it was when he dropped that song.
Speaker B:
That's how you knew he was falling out, whatever.
Speaker B:
And this was like that, you know, it was, it was, but in the best possible, you know, I mean, the best, most amazing way, like people were distraught at the notion that basically this in the eyes of folks in the room got it.
Speaker B:
But you couldn't front on the fact that Will's music sounded better, bigger, tougher and more original in its.
Speaker B:
In a sense, they both came to win.
Speaker B:
I mean, it was, there was, I don't know that there was any like drama between them or nothing or if there was, I wasn't aware of it.
Speaker B:
But they certainly, you know, they certainly.
Speaker A:
Looks like it's like smiles through gritted teeth a little.
Speaker A:
It's really hard to gauge the sentiment.
Speaker B:
Definitely smiles through gritty.
Speaker B:
That's how it felt in the room too.
Speaker B:
And Thess definitely had his boosters with him, a good amount of them, whereas Will and them just walked in on their own.
Speaker B:
And that shit matters in the room because you got a bunch of people trying to clown on the other dude and blowing you up.
Speaker B:
That definitely makes it feel different.
Speaker B:
So it was.
Speaker B:
Yeah, it was.
Speaker B:
It was a much love to both of them.
Speaker B:
Cats, man.
Speaker B:
True.
Speaker B:
You know what I mean?
Speaker B:
People that really, really give a shit about the music, you know, that's.
Speaker B:
No matter how it comes out, that's, you know, you have to respect that.
Speaker A:
So the next thing I wanted to ask you about was the original Keeping Time and firstly kind of how it came about because from what I was reading, I think it came from a photo shoot.
Speaker B:
Yeah, it was supposed to be a photo shoot.
Speaker A:
Only was that just with the drummers then?
Speaker B:
Yes, it was supposed to be originally a photo shoot with the drummers where we would have very nice stylish photos of these sort of very glamorous elder statesmen of soul funk, jazz drumming, with interesting quotes about the time they recorded that famous break beat that we were all accustomed to listening to.
Speaker B:
And of course, what I realized in the process of putting it together was that they had no memory whatsoever.
Speaker B:
I mean, you know, I mean, they're like, but did you play with.
Speaker B:
You played on that Monk Higgins record?
Speaker B:
Oh, yeah, Monk Higgins, man, he was great.
Speaker B:
What record again?
Speaker B:
You know, hey, come on, man, I ain't got no memory or what.
Speaker B:
Are you crazy?
Speaker B:
You know, because a lot of these cats will record an album in the morning and album in the afternoon.
Speaker B:
You know what I mean?
Speaker B:
Like in that era, like, you know, that's kind of how it worked.
Speaker B:
And so.
Speaker B:
So then there's a couple of things happened.
Speaker B:
Then I was like, well, it would be nice to just get a turntable set up in there and play them back this to break in that we're, you know.
Speaker B:
And then I realized, okay, that's great, but that's not really how we listen to it, you know, it's not like we're all sitting around just listening to one man Band plays it all.
Speaker B:
We just put on the Monk Keegan's record.
Speaker B:
We just listen to it and then.
Speaker B:
And then we go to the next.
Speaker B:
That's not how we listen to it.
Speaker B:
We listen to by beat juggling.
Speaker B:
And of course they no idea what that was.
Speaker B:
So I was like, all right.
Speaker B:
So I asked.
Speaker B:
And I asked all the homies.
Speaker B:
Of course, I, you know, these are all people that are, you know, friends or people I knew or people that knew me or whatever.
Speaker B:
And everyone said, babu, you know, Babu is the guy.
Speaker B:
Get Babu.
Speaker B:
So I called Babu.
Speaker B:
The baboo said, okay, I mean, I'm down.
Speaker B:
Can I bring J Rock?
Speaker B:
And I was like, sure, you know, no bother.
Speaker B:
And then it just happened to be the weekend before the Brain Freeze concert in la, right?
Speaker B:
So all of those dudes happened to be in town.
Speaker B:
So Josh was there, Chemist was there.
Speaker B:
So, like, yeah, come through.
Speaker B:
Oh, I'd love to meet Paul Humphrey.
Speaker B:
Could just come by.
Speaker B:
So then, yeah, so then the guy from the magazine said, you know, would be a waste if we didn't film it, you know, And I was thinking, yeah, you know, it's not a bad idea because it'll be an opportunity, you know, I mean, that's where we'll get the quotes from.
Speaker B:
You know what I mean?
Speaker B:
Like, that's.
Speaker B:
That's, you know, that'd be easy.
Speaker B:
As opposed to we'll just mic them up and film it and probably give.
Speaker A:
Some context for the questions as well, right?
Speaker B:
A bit.
Speaker B:
You know, I mean, it was all kind of very informal.
Speaker B:
We, you know, it was.
Speaker B:
Happened very quick, and it was kind of goofy.
Speaker B:
And you know what I mean, These dudes were legends, but they weren't acting like legends.
Speaker B:
They were acting like three old friends.
Speaker B:
And then there was this moment where you know, we played them their.
Speaker B:
And they were just had these kind of goofy faces, like goofy old men, faces of like, oh, and that was amazing.
Speaker B:
And then there's this moment where Paul Humphrey says, you know, well, you want me to play with them?
Speaker B:
Because I had asked them to bring their drum kits because I thought, you know, we're not going to just photograph drummers just standing there.
Speaker B:
Let's just get them to bring their kits.
Speaker B:
We're paying them not a lot of money, but I think paid them like 300 bucks each or 500 bucks each, something.
Speaker B:
And.
Speaker B:
And Paul Humphrey's hey, man, you want me to play with him?
Speaker B:
And I was like, you wait.
Speaker B:
You know what you mean?
Speaker B:
He was like, man, I'm gonna play my drums, okay?
Speaker B:
Says, I don't know nothing about that.
Speaker B:
Jigga, jigga, jigga, jigga.
Speaker B:
And they started playing, and it started to sound like something.
Speaker B:
JRock started bringing that cannabisly baseline in, and I was like, wow, this is starting to sound like something.
Speaker B:
And then cut.
Speaker B:
Asked if he could, hey, be cool if I Do try to do something with Paul.
Speaker B:
And he.
Speaker B:
He had been doing this kind of routine with Ozo Motley where he would play with the drummer.
Speaker B:
So he already had a kind of vocabulary.
Speaker B:
So he.
Speaker B:
So they started to go back and forth.
Speaker B:
I not really turn it to a.
Speaker A:
Moment and that's such a cool bit of it.
Speaker A:
So for anyone who's listening has not seen it.
Speaker A:
Cook chemist, amazing turntables producer.
Speaker A:
As mentioned, he's kind of.
Speaker A:
He's kind of scratch drumming a beat.
Speaker A:
That's Q and A with.
Speaker A:
Is it with Paul Humphrey?
Speaker B:
Paul Humphrey, yeah.
Speaker A:
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:
It's.
Speaker A:
It's really nice sort of piece of music between them.
Speaker A:
Something I wanted to ask you about on it was.
Speaker A:
Was Babu nervous?
Speaker A:
Because he looks.
Speaker A:
Must be mad being like I'm.
Speaker A:
I'm gonna bastardize the.
Speaker A:
This person's art and I want them to understand it and appreciate it.
Speaker A:
It's got to be scary.
Speaker B:
It was terrifying.
Speaker B:
I think it was really terrifying.
Speaker B:
I think we.
Speaker B:
We had a screening of Brazilian Time recently where we took all that whole scene and we took it to Brazil.
Speaker B:
And it's the frank first time I've ever heard.
Speaker B:
It was Baboo, I think.
Speaker B:
But it was both of them.
Speaker B:
Both him and Jay were saying like, yeah, we really didn't know what the we were doing.
Speaker B:
I mean we were just like, you know, these guys are the legends.
Speaker B:
Here we are.
Speaker B:
He didn't say bastardizing.
Speaker B:
There's a.
Speaker B:
Here we are playing their.
Speaker B:
Some of their greatest achievements back to them.
Speaker B:
Well, you know what's going to happen?
Speaker B:
And it really did have that kind of.
Speaker B:
We didn't really know.
Speaker B:
I mean they could have totally turned their noses up at it and been like, yeah, well, that was a crock of.
Speaker B:
But actually what they realized.
Speaker B:
I think what they really realized the first time we screened it and they had an opportunity to play afterwards was that nobody ever really called them out.
Speaker B:
You know, nobody ever really said, you know, who played on that Snoop Dogg song or that Bismarckie song that you love this guy, him.
Speaker B:
Now here he is and he just come out in.
Speaker B:
In our world, you know, in.
Speaker B:
In some club in downtown la, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker B:
And people were really excited about that idea.
Speaker B:
You know, the notion that it was like that's the guy that actually played those drums the first day.
Speaker B:
That's fucking amazing.
Speaker B:
And here he is playing with, you know, the best and brightest of our world.
Speaker B:
This is amazing.
Speaker B:
You know, there's things we did that were.
Speaker B:
Made it more like an art project.
Speaker B:
You know, it was like all right, we'll have sound check.
Speaker B:
We'll have no rehearsals.
Speaker B:
There's no script.
Speaker B:
They can play whatever they like.
Speaker B:
And I think for them, that was kind of novel as well.
Speaker B:
Like, it was kind of like, what?
Speaker B:
I mean, just play.
Speaker B:
Yeah, let's just play.
Speaker B:
You know, there's so few opportunities in our culture that we get a chance to see people that are this great just playing, you know, where they're not under pressure to drop the hits.
Speaker B:
Or can you just play the bit you played on the Bill Withers record?
Speaker B:
Like, nah, just play, man.
Speaker B:
And to me, that felt like, kind of liberating.
Speaker B:
And our job was just to capture it and to edit it into such a way that it would be palatable or understandable.
Speaker B:
But if you were in the room.
Speaker B:
Yeah, there would be moments where you were completely lost or at sea or where the.
Speaker B:
Is the one or.
Speaker B:
You know what I mean?
Speaker B:
It was like free jazz somehow, but once it's edited all back together, you know, it was.
Speaker B:
It turned into something.
Speaker B:
So.
Speaker B:
Yeah, it was, it was, it was.
Speaker B:
Folks were.
Speaker B:
It was a.
Speaker B:
It was scary.
Speaker B:
It was scary for the drummers.
Speaker B:
You know, the, The.
Speaker B:
The classic, you know, the, The.
Speaker B:
The.
Speaker B:
The father of samba drumming on a kit in Brazil is.
Speaker B:
Is at least one of them is Wilson Das Nervous.
Speaker B:
And.
Speaker B:
And the night we played in Sao Paulo, you know, the first time he sat in, he didn't.
Speaker B:
Like, he had a moment.
Speaker B:
He didn't want to do it.
Speaker B:
He was just like, what am I supposed to do?
Speaker B:
I don't know.
Speaker A:
I suppose they're not used to being the, like the center of attention, are they?
Speaker B:
No.
Speaker B:
If you watch Brazilian Time, he explains it, you know, he's like, I know I've been.
Speaker B:
I've had a successful show.
Speaker B:
When people come up to me afterwards and say, that was incredible.
Speaker B:
You didn't get in the way.
Speaker B:
And that.
Speaker B:
I mean, that's the job is like, you support the structure, but you'd never get in the way and that and that.
Speaker B:
And now we're asking you to get in the way.
Speaker B:
It was kind of like.
Speaker B:
And of course, he, you know.
Speaker B:
Of course, in his panic, he managed to do something which, I don't know, for me, it's probably, you know, it's ranks in the top five of things I've ever been privileged enough to see or capture, which is that he.
Speaker B:
He was in the middle of a solo, a very intricate and very beautiful, very subtle solo, and the stick flew out of his hand and off the stage and into the audience.
Speaker B:
And there's this Kind of everybody stops moment and this kid picks up the stick and hands him the stick and somehow without even a breath, he falls right back exactly on the right place.
Speaker B:
Like it's just kind of extraordinary.
Speaker B:
It's like you threw him a blank.
Speaker B:
And he somehow made it into the most beautiful piece of magic.
Speaker B:
I mean, and.
Speaker B:
And he, you know, he did that.
Speaker B:
I mean he's Wilson das Nez was, you know, is a proper legend of Brazilian music.
Speaker B:
But he brought that magic to us, you know, so.
Speaker A:
So with Brazilian time, was that the thing that introduced you to Brazil or had you.
Speaker A:
Did you do it because of the love of Brazil?
Speaker B:
That was the thing that introduced.
Speaker B:
That was just.
Speaker B:
Red Bull Music Academy had decided that the next academy was going to be in Sao Paulo.
Speaker B:
They could have said the next academy is going to be in Mumbai.
Speaker B:
I mean, you know, I mean, like it was.
Speaker B:
They had that kind of resources.
Speaker B:
They had decided they were going to go to Sao Paulo and they said, would you guys like to come and would you do the thing?
Speaker B:
And I said sure.
Speaker B:
You know, and then it started.
Speaker B:
I mean, okay, I had a couple of boss of jazz records and I, I even had a record, I had a Lenny Andraji record that I'd found by complete Fluke on a car boot sale on the side of the street one time.
Speaker B:
That was.
Speaker B:
That's actually had the first Verocai arrangement on it, the first recorded Veracay, but that was by Fluke.
Speaker B:
And I knew nothing, I mean, I really knew nothing about Brazilian music.
Speaker B:
I knew about bossa nova maybe a little bit, but I knew nothing really.
Speaker B:
I was completely green.
Speaker B:
I think at that point I probably knew more about Colombian music than I did Brazilian music, for example.
Speaker B:
And then the research started and then again another life changing detourment, like turn, like really weird turn.
Speaker B:
But yeah, and then that, that's the whole Brazil thing.
Speaker B:
That's how the Brazil thing started.
Speaker B:
2002.
Speaker A:
Amazing.
Speaker A:
Yeah, I can imagine that, that trip with the people that you went with and stuff.
Speaker A:
You must have learned so much about records then.
Speaker A:
And I guess like with all the rest of the digging that you've, you know, you've spent so much time around so many people with just the most ridiculous knowledge.
Speaker B:
I mean, the first trip was by myself, by myself and Eric.
Speaker B:
So there was no diggers with us.
Speaker A:
And that was that like a recce then?
Speaker B:
That was like a recce, yeah.
Speaker B:
And I certainly, I was aware that I needed to make an argument with music for these guys to take the ch.
Speaker B:
Take, you know, at all of them working musicians, you know, DJs, musicians, whatever, but that I would have to make an argument with the music for them to stop what they were doing and come to Brazil for 10 days or whatever it was that we went there.
Speaker B:
It was like, I was like 10 days, something that was.
Speaker B:
Or maybe longer, two weeks.
Speaker B:
And in a moment where, you know, the only things that people knew about Brazil were mostly negative, honestly, whether it was to do with the AIDS epidemic, whether it was to do with violence, whether it was to do with poverty, whether it was, you know, there's.
Speaker B:
The only popular things is there's a lot of good looking women and there's football and there's sambo, but we don't really know much about that.
Speaker B:
And Otis was really the, Otis was the leader, really.
Speaker B:
Otis knew more than everybody.
Speaker B:
Mad was, was already a big fan of Azimuth.
Speaker B:
Otis had been buying all the far out stuff.
Speaker B:
Had been buying the Giles and Cliffy and even before that, you know, from his upbringing and the fact that his father, you know, his father is a musician and his uncle is, is a famous trumpet player, John Faddis.
Speaker B:
You know, he was very, he was very, very comfortable within Brazil, you know, thinking about Brazilian music.
Speaker B:
So yeah, so that was the, that was the, you know, that was the, that was the vibe.
Speaker B:
Egon and Cut had lists of records that they had heard about or that they were looking for.
Speaker B:
And then the rest of us were just freefall, you know, build the net on the way down.
Speaker B:
So yeah, of course we bought a bunch of records and then we found a few gems and then, and then we found a few more gems and then we learned about other gems and then we kept going back and then it kind of grew from there.
Speaker B:
But you know, by now it's kind of.
Speaker B:
Yeah, I, I DJ there at a friend's birthday party the last time, just now when I was there and afterwards there was a bunch of Brazilian cats.
Speaker B:
Cat came up to me and they were asking me to.
Speaker B:
How long have you been studying Brazilian music?
Speaker B:
I was just like studying sounds so weird.
Speaker B:
But like.
Speaker B:
Yeah, I mean it has, it's a work of research, you know, because I don't really.
Speaker B:
I mean, I can speak the language a bit, but like not enough to understand lyrics often.
Speaker B:
And then it's mostly from talking to people, you know, it's mostly by my ear.
Speaker B:
I'm led by my ears, you know, so.
Speaker B:
And I figured out a few things.
Speaker B:
Brazilians are often impressed.
Speaker B:
I'm.
Speaker B:
I'm not terribly impressed with myself, but Brazilians are often Impressed?
Speaker B:
Oh, my God.
Speaker B:
How do you know?
Speaker B:
My bad.
Speaker B:
I don't know.
Speaker B:
I just pay attention.
Speaker B:
But, yeah, that's how it started.
Speaker B:
I mean, we made three CDs.
Speaker B:
I came back and I made three CDs.
Speaker B:
I bought a. I bought a CD recorder.
Speaker B:
I didn't have one at that point.
Speaker B:
And I recorded in.
Speaker B:
Just straight ripped from the vinyl.
Speaker B:
I recorded in three CDs of music that I thought would perk their interests.
Speaker B:
But, like, if you've seen Brazilian Time and if you remember it, you know, like, we actually caught Babu finding a sample for a song that he then put out like a year or two later, before the film was finished, that we were able to.
Speaker B:
You know, you just see him in his.
Speaker B:
In listening in the room, and you can see his face changes.
Speaker B:
You can see he.
Speaker B:
He hears it.
Speaker B:
And then, you know, and then we're able to cut to the actual song.
Speaker B:
And I mean, it's like, you know, very few people have had the opportunity to do that.
Speaker B:
I mean, they've set it up to do that.
Speaker B:
You know, it's like, go out, find a record, bring it back to the studio, make a joint.
Speaker B:
But this was something where it was actually, and it was even a kind of a hit, you know, for him.
Speaker B:
So, you know, not.
Speaker B:
Not.
Speaker B:
And I haven't even mentioned the fact that Madeline made the second part, the second half of Mad Villainy, which is, you know, a good.
Speaker B:
A good argument to be made that that's, you know, one of the most important, if not the most important rap record of that era.
Speaker B:
And you see him fucking doing it right there in the fucking room.
Speaker B:
You know, that's the same setup.
Speaker B:
It was all done to tape.
Speaker B:
And then he transferred the tape to a CD and he sent the CD to Doom and Doom, wrapped over the whole and sent it back.
Speaker B:
And that's the second part of the fucking record.
Speaker B:
I mean, it's.
Speaker B:
It's, you know, it's kind of extraordinary.
Speaker B:
And it was an extraordinary moment for all of us.
Speaker B:
I think the vibe changed.
Speaker B:
Like, when we came back, you know, people noticed, like, things were different.
Speaker B:
We felt different because we'd been there.
Speaker B:
And it was, you know, it was.
Speaker B:
It was a particularly optimistic moment in Brazil.
Speaker B:
It was a particularly pessimistic, dark moment here in the US after 9 11, as.
Speaker B:
Here we are on 9 11.
Speaker B:
Of course, yeah, but.
Speaker B:
And we went to Brazil where Lula had just been elected.
Speaker B:
It felt like properly, finally the.
Speaker B:
The dictatorship was done.
Speaker B:
Done, and.
Speaker B:
And that things were going to be better for the majority of Brazilians.
Speaker B:
Finally.
Speaker B:
And it was palpable, really.
Speaker B:
You know, he was elected that October.
Speaker B:
That's when we were there to shoot the film.
Speaker B:
And so.
Speaker B:
Or it took us.
Speaker B:
It took like six years to finish it.
Speaker B:
You know what I mean?
Speaker B:
Because to actually provide context so that you could understand as a viewer what was so special about it, it meant that we had to kind of fill in a whole bunch of details which took a long time to put together because we had to fucking figure them out ourselves.
Speaker B:
But it was a very important.
Speaker B:
It was a very, very important piece of work, really, for me.
Speaker B:
You know, I mean, it was in a lot of ways.
Speaker B:
I mean, I haven't gone back to making that kind of film until the last couple of years, just because of the level of commitment that it requires.
Speaker B:
e Supremes tour of Ireland in:
Speaker A:
Oh, nice.
Speaker B:
Which is going to be that kind of a film again, where it has a lot of information that maybe you wouldn't normally get in a.
Speaker B:
In a.
Speaker B:
In a documentary like this.
Speaker B:
So.
Speaker A:
Yeah, yeah, because I was gonna say, because the next thing.
Speaker A:
There's one more thing that I'll ask you about.
Speaker A:
And then the next thing's like a.
Speaker A:
Like another decade apart.
Speaker A:
So, like, I kind of get it with the films.
Speaker A:
What about Sweet For My Dukes, then?
Speaker A:
Did you have a relationship with Dilla?
Speaker B:
Yes, yes, we photograph.
Speaker B:
I photographed Dilla for the Champion Sound Record with Mad Lib.
Speaker B:
I had met him when he was working with the Far side.
Speaker B:
He didn't want to be photographed.
Speaker B:
Then I met him and introduced J Rock to him.
Speaker A:
Oh, wow.
Speaker B:
In:
Speaker B:
It was 99 when the.
Speaker B:
When A M was going to put out the Slum Village record, I went over there and photographed him.
Speaker B:
Then those photographs ended up being the funeral photographs.
Speaker B:
Wow.
Speaker B:
So we had met him in Detroit and then we moved to la.
Speaker B:
We, you know, we.
Speaker B:
We, you know, we.
Speaker B:
Yeah, I've seen him a few, you know, a bunch of times.
Speaker B:
And then when we finished Keeping Time, the long version, not the sort of 13 minute short that started the whole thing, but the longer version where you see the show.
Speaker B:
We were invited to close out this film festival in Brazil and they wanted to show that film and then they wanted Mad Lib to play.
Speaker B:
And so he asked Mad Libs you would go.
Speaker B:
Of course, he was super down at that time.
Speaker B:
He was single.
Speaker B:
He had a lot less responsibilities than he does now.
Speaker B:
And the idea of going and having a chance to go record digging in Brazil and Get paid to do it was great.
Speaker B:
But I said, you know, if you're going to perform, you know, you.
Speaker B:
You could bring a DJ if you want to.
Speaker B:
You could bring somebody to.
Speaker B:
To perform with you or whatever.
Speaker B:
They'll be no problem with that.
Speaker B:
And he was like, well, who do you.
Speaker B:
Well, who are you thinking?
Speaker B:
And of course, we were working on Brazilian time, and the argument of Brazilian time was that the first proper kind of Brazilian sample is running.
Speaker B:
So we thought, you know, what could be better than to have Diller in Brazil talking about Brazilian music?
Speaker B:
So why did you invite Dylan?
Speaker B:
And he was like, oh, oh, that's a really good idea.
Speaker B:
So right then and there in the back of my car, he called and said yes.
Speaker B:
And of course, it all sounded great until we saw him.
Speaker B:
And he was in much worse shape than he expected, Right.
Speaker B:
And, well, he only lasted three days or four days in Brazil.
Speaker B:
He got to go digging one morning.
Speaker B:
That's the famous photo of him and Madeleine digging.
Speaker B:
But, yeah, at the funeral, then Maureen, his mom, took me and Eric aside and said, you know, I just want to say it to you guys personally that I know what happened in Brazil, but I also need you to know just how important it was to him to go there.
Speaker B:
And I really appreciate that.
Speaker B:
And, you know, you guys will always be friends of ours because you made that happen, which was very moving for us.
Speaker B:
You know, we were very sad about his passing, of course, but then this put an extra level on it.
Speaker B:
So, yeah, I mean, we knew him.
Speaker B:
So when Carlos and Miguel came with the idea to us, they were picking some.
Speaker B:
They were picking a production company or a label that they felt like had a relationship to Dilla and would be able to.
Speaker B:
Would be the right kind of home for the project, which was, you know, when it started, it was just really no drums.
Speaker B:
It was just strings.
Speaker B:
And then basically after that, then this Chinese tech company had sponsored the Brazilian Time DVD release and were totally blown away by it.
Speaker B:
And then they came back and they said, well, next year we want to go bigger.
Speaker B:
We want to do something that's.
Speaker B:
He said, like, the brief was kind of like, pitch me something that.
Speaker B:
That you guys can film that.
Speaker B:
That's a kind of a once in a lifetime experience, musically, that'll never happen again.
Speaker B:
So he said, okay.
Speaker B:
And then, besides us, Ross G. Was the first person I ever heard say the words openly.
Speaker B:
But I had been thinking about this for a long time in regards to Axelrod, which is that if you want to describe how hip hop producers now fit in, in terms of the Old days.
Speaker B:
They're kind of composer arrangers.
Speaker B:
They're not musicians per se.
Speaker B:
They're not singers per se.
Speaker B:
They're composer arrangers.
Speaker B:
And arranging is important here.
Speaker B:
You know, like a lot of what we call sampling is just an automated version of rearrangement.
Speaker B:
It's, you know, these are rearrangements.
Speaker B:
And so we thought, what if we did a.
Speaker B:
You know, that so many of the records that, you know, that we love and that we've come to know through hip hop were records that were never performed live.
Speaker B:
Right.
Speaker B:
So we were thinking primarily about the ax of AD records.
Speaker B:
But then we were thinking the Malato records had never been performed live, for example, certainly not in this country.
Speaker B:
And we were thinking about people like Charles Stepney, you know, which I've been fortunate enough to do some work with his music as well.
Speaker B:
But, you know, this was music that had never been performed live.
Speaker B:
People never had an opportunity to see this because of the kind of economics of the music industry.
Speaker B:
So we thought, what if we did a concert series where we performed the classic works of Axelrod?
Speaker B:
And what if we did a series where we performed the classic works of Malatu?
Speaker B:
What if we did a concert series where we did the entirety of the Arthur Verokai record?
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
And then the last leg was, what if we gave Miguel the money to orchestrate the music of Dylan?
Speaker B:
You know, and so we wrote the proposal, he accepted it.
Speaker B:
Of course, we blew through the budget.
Speaker B:
Like, man, doing anything with orchestras is just like.
Speaker B:
I mean, I don't know, I guess that's what like, you know, doing big production, big movies is like this too.
Speaker B:
You know, you just piss through the money.
Speaker B:
I mean, it's just.
Speaker B:
The money just goes like, you know.
Speaker B:
But, yeah, we spent a shitload of money and made the Timeless series.
Speaker B:
Axelrod got sick and didn't want to do the show, which was a disaster, which meant that Mochila went in the hole pretty badly.
Speaker B:
The guy at the Chinese tech company got let go not during Timeless, but maybe like six, eight months later when we were putting out the DVDs.
Speaker B:
Actually, while we were in the middle of the tour promoting the DVDs, the guy got let go from VTech.
Speaker B:
And then suite for Ma Dukes is really the template then for a lot of orchestral hip hop interpolations or whatever.
Speaker B:
So somehow between Tom Bacon, myself, Eric, Carlos Nino, whose name isn't even on the record, which was a long story, but, you know, who was really the kind of music director of the entire Timeless series was Carlos Nino.
Speaker B:
Yeah, it wasn't Kind of, he was.
Speaker B:
And then Miguel, as a kind of young aspiring composer, arranger, who did really a kind of extraordinary thing there.
Speaker B:
Like, he really allowed himself to think of the orchestra as a hip hop tool and the work of that particular group of musicians, which.
Speaker B:
There's a kind of, you know, there's a kind of core group there that, that play in both the Suite from a Dukes and the Verocay that are extraordinary, that are, you know, that any other city in the world, you'd be challenged to find cats that were that heavy and that young and that sensitive to hip hop.
Speaker B:
And then of course, we were, you know, we, we, you know, we.
Speaker B:
We brought our best guns too.
Speaker B:
You know what I mean?
Speaker B:
We, we.
Speaker B:
We really tried to.
Speaker B:
We really tried to do something spectacular.
Speaker B:
Shot it in black and white and screened it in black and white live above the.
Speaker B:
Above the orchestra while we were.
Speaker B:
While we were doing it.
Speaker B:
And, you know, we figured out a bunch of then as well.
Speaker B:
Sadly, the market in DVDs kind of collapsed right as that series came out.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
Which, you know, kind of hurt us.
Speaker B:
The vinyl has never stopped.
Speaker B:
The vinyl still sells still in the world.
Speaker B:
People still like it.
Speaker B:
Vero Cai, Lord knows, has become a kind of extraordinary success.
Speaker B:
He just performed in Brazil when I was there with an orchestra.
Speaker B:
And obviously the work of Dilla, the appreciation for the work of Dilla, the ongoing work of the deification of Dilla has continues.
Speaker B:
And I like to think that Sweet for Madukes is a part of that.
Speaker B:
And certainly Mulattu is doing his thing, you know what I mean?
Speaker B:
I think he's found a good home for his music.
Speaker B:
Ethio jazz has never been more popular.
Speaker B:
Certainly Jim Jarmusch with that film with.
Speaker B:
With Bill Murray, Broken Flowers did a lot to help the popularization of Ethiopian music, but I think the timeless concert certainly didn't.
Speaker B:
Didn't hurt.
Speaker B:
I love what Malato is doing with the Heliocentrics and paying attention for those projects.
Speaker B:
So I, you know, I'd like to think that was a work of curation and filmmaking and whatever that, you know.
Speaker A:
It'S got its legacy.
Speaker B:
It has its, like, you know, it definitely made it.
Speaker B:
It made an impact.
Speaker A:
So amazing.
Speaker A:
The other thing that I just wanted to ask about was with Sweet from Our Dukes, because although I owned the dvd, I certainly did own it.
Speaker A:
I've never actually watched the DVD because I just always listened to the album, so.
Speaker A:
And it's incredible.
Speaker A:
What was the energy like in the room as an experience?
Speaker B:
It was like.
Speaker A:
It's that it sounds amazing.
Speaker B:
It was insane.
Speaker B:
It was really insane.
Speaker B:
There was.
Speaker B:
In those shows, there was always an intermission, right?
Speaker B:
And so the first part of the show was entirely.
Speaker B:
How would you say?
Speaker B:
There was no drums.
Speaker B:
So there was some orchestral percussion, but there was no drums.
Speaker B:
We hadn't even brought out Kareem Riggins yet.
Speaker B:
And at the.
Speaker B:
At the break, people were coming up to me, people like Charlie Tuna, you know, people that you.
Speaker B:
You know what I mean?
Speaker B:
Like, and saying, like, bro, this is the most amazing show I think I've ever seen.
Speaker B:
I was like, bro, I remember Oliver Wang said to me, bro, I don't know if I want to stay any longer.
Speaker B:
What's going to happen?
Speaker B:
Like, I feel like I've taken in enough.
Speaker B:
This is so insane.
Speaker B:
Please don't leave.
Speaker B:
Please don't leave.
Speaker B:
And so by the time, you know, by the time Pasta News came out and brought out Talib and Common can and said some words and shit, I mean, it was.
Speaker B:
Yeah, I mean, it's the kind of thing that you.
Speaker B:
Yeah, it's the kind of high that you get that you just feel like, I want to feel this.
Speaker B:
I want to be able to make situations happen.
Speaker B:
People feel like this again.
Speaker B:
The other thing I would say that would made it so special, honestly, was when Dilla passed.
Speaker B:
Dilla was extraordinarily private person, so when he passed, there was that funeral, you know, like, where all the musicians came and whatever, and we went.
Speaker B:
And.
Speaker B:
And then they all went back to the house.
Speaker B:
We didn't.
Speaker B:
But we just didn't feel that close to being able to, you know, like, going back to somebody's house after a funeral, to me, is kind of.
Speaker B:
And that was it.
Speaker B:
And, you know, unfortunately, too many times people pass, and we never really had a chance to publicly eulogize them.
Speaker B:
And this was that situation where it was like somebody, Carlos Nino and Miguel Atwood Ferguson figured out the perfect way to eulogize this man and to celebrate what was so beautiful about his music, which wasn't necessarily, even though it's important, his capacity to chop, his capacity to hear samples, his capacity to make swingy beats that people wanted to rap on.
Speaker B:
hole bunch of people, kind of:
Speaker B:
To just Regular Joe's, Regular Joes and Jills, you know, I'm saying, had an opportunity in their own small way to spark one and to appreciate Dilla.
Speaker B:
And to me, that was something really.
Speaker B:
There was something really kind of fundamentally important about the idea that, you know, we.
Speaker B:
We need to be able to eulogize it.
Speaker B:
Our.
Speaker B:
You know, when we lose a soldier, especially a soldier that's, you know, I don't know about you, but like, there was a good sort of five years there where, like, the music for me was being driven by.
Speaker B:
By Dilla and Madlet.
Speaker B:
And it was very important and it helped us in our lives and to be able to say thank you in the way that we did and to give it so much care and attention and so much sweat and blood.
Speaker B:
Not just Miguel, who obviously gave a massive sacrifice, but to everybody that worked on it, to Tom Bacon, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker B:
To the, to the, to the.
Speaker B:
Andrew Lou Harros, all those people, you know, I'm saying that the, the whole Mochila conglomerate, those musicians, there's something very.
Speaker B:
When it's done correctly and it's done imaginatively, it's extraordinary.
Speaker B:
The only thing I'd say I've seen that really kind of topped it for me in some crazy way is Jason Moran, the jazz pianist, did a kind of tribute to the Thelonious Monk Town hall concerts.
Speaker B:
And I thought, And I felt like now there's, There's.
Speaker B:
That's the realm, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker B:
After Sweet Verma Dukes, that's where we gotta go.
Speaker B:
You know what I mean?
Speaker B:
I've certainly, you know, I certainly, I. I worked on a project with a young British composer, Bobby Jane Gardner, where we paid tribute to the music of Axelrod and Charles Stepney.
Speaker B:
And I felt like that also was extraordinary.
Speaker B:
But there's.
Speaker B:
It's a thing now, I think, for people to eulogize records or eulogize people and bring in an orchestra and the whole thing.
Speaker B:
But I think, I don't know, I really feel like, you know, as with doing a cover of a song, unless you're adding something to what's already been done, then it's kind of like, why are you doing it?
Speaker B:
And I think, yeah, a lot of times, a lot of times it's a bit.
Speaker B:
It's too easy for curators or promoters or folks that put together programmers to just kind of slap a name on something.
Speaker B:
You know, we're doing a tribute to.
Speaker B:
I'm not going to say any names, but, you know, we're doing a tribute to musician X or composer Y or whatever.
Speaker B:
And it's just, we're going to go out here and do a cover night of covers.
Speaker B:
It just seems to me it's kind of like, come on now, that's not what they would want.
Speaker A:
Not making it your own.
Speaker B:
It's not even making it your own, but it's like, add something, you know, add something.
Speaker B:
Add something from the present, Add something from your mind.
Speaker B:
Add something from the world.
Speaker B:
Add something from music now.
Speaker B:
Add something that people aren't thinking of.
Speaker B:
Find new ways to hear this.
Speaker B:
And too much of the time that doesn't happen.
Speaker B:
But, you know, sweet for My Dukes for me was really a kind of a benchmark work in terms of actually showing what's possible.
Speaker B:
And, and it was, it was.
Speaker B:
I mean, this isn't me, you know, I mean, and this isn't Miguel, and, and this certainly isn't just Dilla.
Speaker B:
This was a lot of, A lot of people's energy and, and imagination and, and, and, and something to be very proud of.
Speaker B:
Something very, you know, in the room.
Speaker B:
It was extraordinary.
Speaker B:
I. I can't, I can't.
Speaker B:
You know, it was kind of one of those things where, like, after that, I feel like me.
Speaker B:
And pass could say.
Speaker B:
I could say that was the homie, you know, which is crazy because it's somebody I was, you know, idolized growing up.
Speaker B:
You know what I'm saying?
Speaker B:
And I think he's even younger than me.
Speaker B:
But, you know, after that experience, it was like, you know, I felt like I knew him, you know, I mean, I felt like we, we, you know, I mean, and, you know, I, I remember she sat right there, Maureen, the day after the concert, you know, she.
Speaker B:
She was supposed to go visit the grave, and then she was supposed to come here to do an interview that we used in the film.
Speaker B:
And she came here early and we were all like, okay, weren't you supposed to go to the grave?
Speaker B:
And she said, no, I didn't go to.
Speaker B:
I didn't need to go to the grave today and say, ho, Izib.
Speaker B:
Well, after last night, I know he's okay.
Speaker B:
That should suck.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
You know what I'm saying?
Speaker B:
It's like, yeah, you don't get, you know, I mean, that is very rare in your life that you get the privilege to do or be involved in something that affects somebody so personally and so heavily.
Speaker B:
So, yeah, it's great.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker A:
So the other key thing I wanted to ask you about really was I got a copy of Ghost Notes.
Speaker A:
And I appreciate, like, I say we're jumping very far there.
Speaker A:
So I do apologize if there's any sort of key things that I'm missing because, I mean, it's fine.
Speaker B:
There's.
Speaker B:
We could be here all night.
Speaker B:
You know what I mean?
Speaker B:
So.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker A:
So Ghost Notes is really interesting in terms of.
Speaker A:
I think, like I said before, I'm not a photographer.
Speaker A:
I'm not someone who massively understands or anything like that, but it was interesting to me looking at it and thinking about it is the concept of sort of a visual mixtape.
Speaker B:
Yeah.
Speaker A:
And.
Speaker A:
And the title Ghost Notes and what you said talked about the space between with things like that.
Speaker A:
So is it kind of.
Speaker A:
And this comes into something that you mentioned earlier on.
Speaker A:
I can't remember exactly what it was that you said, but thinking about not a picture in isolation, but in respect to the one it's next to.
Speaker B:
Yeah.
Speaker A:
So it's kind of like I remember listening to Z Strip and Radar's Future Primitive Mix ages ago.
Speaker A:
And.
Speaker A:
And that was the.
Speaker A:
That was the point because you talked about.
Speaker A:
About not always liking a song straight away.
Speaker B:
Yeah.
Speaker A:
And the way they mixed in Paid In Full gave me an appreciation for Paid in Full that I'd not had before.
Speaker B:
Yeah.
Speaker A:
So it's.
Speaker A:
Sometimes it's with the context and what it's in between.
Speaker A:
So, yeah, it'd be interesting to sort of hear your view on how.
Speaker A:
How you take in the Ghost Notes book.
Speaker B:
Well, the idea of Ghost Notes was something that I was familiar with and had used since the 90s.
Speaker B:
First time I came into became familiar with it was Bernard Purdy had this instructional video about that he made about drumming where he was just explaining about fills and whatever.
Speaker B:
Newmark showed it to me back in the day because we were.
Speaker B:
Around the time we were doing Keeping Time, he was like, have you ever seen this?
Speaker B:
And then he showed me and I was like, wow.
Speaker B:
And I was really enamored by the idea because it kind of describes kind of perfectly the secondary part of photography, which is the first part is about, you know, responding to what's there in terms of light, in terms of the subject, in terms of how you frame things and timing and that kind of stuff.
Speaker B:
But the secondary part of it is how does that image then fit next to another image and then what happens in between the two.
Speaker B:
And this is something that like Roland Barth has written about.
Speaker B:
I mean, there's, you know, it's quite.
Speaker B:
Yeah, it's.
Speaker B:
And it's, it's.
Speaker B:
It's.
Speaker B:
It's not too dissimilar in many respects.
Speaker B:
To the way people think about editing when it comes to things like cinema, you know, so, you know, there's the famous Russian test where they show you the same photograph and then the words describe something.
Speaker B:
You know, it's a photograph of a guy, and it's a photograph of a loaf of bread and say, well, what's the guy thinking?
Speaker B:
He's always hungry.
Speaker B:
And you show you the next photo, and it's a photograph of the guy, and it's a photograph of a. I don't know, a glass of water.
Speaker B:
What's he thinking?
Speaker B:
Oh, he's thirsty.
Speaker B:
This is actually the same photograph.
Speaker B:
You know what I'm saying?
Speaker B:
So there's this thing that we do in our mind, you know, we have a tendency to create meanings.
Speaker B:
And so for me, the difference between Clyde Stubblefield playing the funky drummer rhythm and any other drummer in the world playing the funky drummer rhythm is the ghost notes, you know, and this isn't me.
Speaker B:
This is.
Speaker B:
People like Questlove will tell you that, you know, the difference is it's in the ghosts.
Speaker B:
It's in the sounds that the kit makes that his body makes in interfacing with the kit.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
Affords the.
Speaker B:
The.
Speaker B:
The rhythm a kind of.
Speaker B:
A kind of musicality, a kind of swing that's almost unintentioned.
Speaker B:
You know, it's.
Speaker B:
It's.
Speaker B:
It's.
Speaker B:
It's in the space of.
Speaker B:
This kind of.
Speaker B:
Space of.
Speaker B:
Of.
Speaker B:
I didn't really think it.
Speaker B:
It just kind of.
Speaker B:
That's just the way.
Speaker B:
And.
Speaker B:
And for me to try to think of photography as something that has an analogous relationship to drumming was helpful because there's a kind of rhythmic aspect to it.
Speaker B:
But the notion itself that, you know, ghost.
Speaker B:
Ghost notes implies a kind of.
Speaker B:
I don't want to say paranormal, but that the notion that there are folks from the other realm present in some respects speaks to the kind of temporal aspect of photography where, you know, as soon as the photograph is made, the moment is gone and it will never happen again.
Speaker B:
And you've just frozen.
Speaker B:
You've.
Speaker B:
You know, you've started.
Speaker B:
And whether you realize it or not, you've started a discussion with your own mortality.
Speaker B:
Every time you take a selfie, for example.
Speaker B:
You know what I mean?
Speaker B:
It's about freezing you.
Speaker B:
You know, there's a kind of, you know, what's.
Speaker B:
What's the.
Speaker B:
What do they call it when you freeze people?
Speaker B:
You know, liquid nitrogen.
Speaker B:
There's a kind of weirdly, you know, necrophiliac, cryogenic aspect to photography.
Speaker B:
Well, besides the fact that so many people that I photographed are no longer with us.
Speaker B:
But besides that, the notion of ghost notes seemed very generative and it seemed like rich with meaning and the kinds of ambiguities that I like.
Speaker B:
And so that's, so I'd been using the name to describe long sequences of photographs for a long time.
Speaker B:
So then when it came time to do the book, I didn't feel like I was, I didn't feel like I was, Yeah, I, I, I don't like the greatest hits approach, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker B:
It'll probably happen at some point later, like somebody will offer me some money or something and I'll do like a greatest hits or whatever and whatever.
Speaker B:
But for me, it was much more generative to do something that was kind of more narrative, more like a, more like a mix CD in the way that a mix CD can be narrative, where you would grow familiar with the idea of certain photos belonging next to each other.
Speaker B:
Like Leon Ware looking across at George Clinton, or, you know what I'm saying, Dilla's Timberlands right next to the Dilla's funeral, or, you know what I'm saying, Pharaoh Saunders right next to a photograph of old village in the north of Mexico, or a photograph of flying Lotus next to a photograph of Alice Coltrane or, you know what I mean, like, whatever.
Speaker B:
Like that they could have a kind of resonance.
Speaker B:
You could actually say things about music and our experience of music through sequences of photographs just seemed like a, seemed like an important thing to do and to take on board.
Speaker B:
And then I was lucky enough that the guy who was the editor at University of Texas Press had seen an extended photo essay that I had done in a Spanish photo book eight years previously and reached out out of nowhere and said, hey, you know, I think you should do a book.
Speaker B:
Do you, have you ever thought about doing a book?
Speaker B:
And I was like, bro, I'm sitting here with a book right now, ready to go.
Speaker B:
And that was it, really.
Speaker B:
It was an important thing for me to do.
Speaker A:
In it, there's, you get a sense that you've traveled and, and been to a lot of different places and situations through the book as well.
Speaker A:
So, you know, it kind of illustrates and you know that it's, you know, there's so much beyond the music stuff as well.
Speaker B:
For sure, music always gets what gets me there.
Speaker B:
But then there's, yeah, I mean, it's, we exist in the world, so I'd be silly not to, you know, if I see something that's a photography, I have to be honest, I don't know necessarily if that will ever happen again for me because my relationship to the, to photography in the everyday has changed since that period.
Speaker B:
Like the prevalence of phones, just the continuous prevalence of image making has changed the way I interact with photography in the likes and that.
Speaker B:
So yeah, it's kind of a moment rudely enough.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker A:
Because I wanted to ask what that's like because I kind of see, feel and understand more about the impact of the digital world and the low barrier to entry for music stuff.
Speaker B:
But it's the same, you know, it's the same.
Speaker B:
It's like everywhere you go there's.
Speaker B:
Yeah.
Speaker B:
And in fairness, a lot of times the, I prefer what the phone gets to what I get, you know, and what I, what, you know, for me to get it.
Speaker B:
It can be complicated and challenging and I don't get even close to the same buzz getting it out of my phone and I do busting out a camera and I think it's, it's leading me to little by little I'm eking my way back to only wanting to shoot film now, which is, sucks so weird.
Speaker B:
But that's just kind of.
Speaker B:
Yeah, I feel like kind of.
Speaker B:
I mean there's a whole generation of kids that are fucking only want to shoot film, which is interesting to me that never had a relationship to film first time around for their own reasons.
Speaker B:
But I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm finding more and more I think I'm on their side somehow some weird way.
Speaker B:
And like, I don't wanna, I'm tired of the over saturation.
Speaker B:
I mean I'm, I have, I have image fatigue.
Speaker B:
I really do.
Speaker B:
You know, the way we, the way we consume images, the way we make images, you know, it's, it's, it's something has changed fundamentally and I'm, I'm not entirely pleased about it.
Speaker B:
So, you know, I'm very happy as an educator that you know, I'm not teaching that something completely fucking, you know, I won't say irrelevant but you know what I mean, like a kind of out of date or past due date technology.
Speaker B:
I'm not, I'm front and center of, you know, to me the most important kind of, you know, there's real reasons why image making matters.
Speaker B:
There's real reasons in Palestine right now why, you know, there are so many journalists dead.
Speaker B:
You know, there's real reasons right now why images are important, unequivocally, maybe more important than they've been in a long time.
Speaker B:
And I'm happy to be able to teach about that.
Speaker B:
It's just.
Speaker B:
Personally, I have.
Speaker B:
My relationship to image making has changed so since.
Speaker B:
I mean, it's just, you know, I mean, this is normal shit, you know, this is a life and you have to.
Speaker B:
Your job is to live it as well as you can.
Speaker B:
Obviously, I'm making images all the time.
Speaker B:
Don't get me wrong.
Speaker B:
I mean, I'm absolutely making images all the time, but it's just the kind of the way I hold it in my body is a little different, so.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker A:
And how long have you been working in education?
Speaker B:
So I started teaching in:
Speaker A:
Was there a period of adjustment to that because you've spent so much time being the, like the doer and the student of it?
Speaker B:
Yeah, I mean, it was.
Speaker B:
It.
Speaker B:
I mean, I'm still going through that.
Speaker B:
Don't.
Speaker B:
Don't ask my boss.
Speaker B:
It's challenging, you know, I mean, I never really had a job.
Speaker B:
You know what I'm saying?
Speaker B:
Like, I mean, not to be weird, but like, I've always done this and, you know, to be places and to turn in emails and turn in reports and shit on time is a challenge.
Speaker B:
Teaching was never a challenge.
Speaker B:
I've always.
Speaker B:
Somehow I've always thrived at teaching in ways that I. I'm excited about.
Speaker B:
I. I love discussing and I love introducing people to ideas and I.
Speaker B:
You know, all the kind of things that makes teaching kind of easy are things that were already in my life.
Speaker B:
But the job part of it, the job politics part of it is.
Speaker B:
Yeah, I mean, that's.
Speaker B:
That's been very challenging.
Speaker B:
So.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker A:
Yeah.
Speaker A:
So I'm mindful that we've done two and a half hours now.
Speaker A:
We've covered a lot of ground.
Speaker A:
And also.
Speaker A:
Yeah, to be totally clear, I know there's a hell of a lot that we've not.
Speaker A:
One last thing then, Brian.
Speaker A:
I think we're in a society now where everyone's a creator and it's very easy for people to create.
Speaker A:
Create for the wrong reasons and things like that.
Speaker A:
So just before we go, could you kind of share any words around it?
Speaker A:
Because you've had such an organic journey and, you know, you've.
Speaker A:
It certainly comes across things have been created for the right reasons.
Speaker A:
Have you got any sort of advice for people?
Speaker A:
Whether it's a DJ doing a mix, photographer doing a photo essay or.
Speaker A:
Or whatever.
Speaker B:
I mean, it's.
Speaker B:
Yeah, I mean, there's loads of things I can say and, and mostly there are things I'll.
Speaker B:
I'LL credit them where I can know your Bradford Young, the great African American dp.
Speaker B:
You know, trust yourself, know yourself, Go to yourself first.
Speaker B:
Cultivate a way of being that is dignified, that is honest, that has grace, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker B:
And then lean into that and trust that.
Speaker B:
Okay?
Speaker B:
Don't ever be competitive.
Speaker B:
Don't look at the record the other guy got and feel, don't do that.
Speaker B:
You know, obviously, you know, there's whatever, we're all human.
Speaker B:
But I tried to move away from being, you know, looking at what the other guy got and being like, I wish I got that, that what you're getting is for you, you know what I mean?
Speaker B:
What you're getting is about what you've been put to work in for and be grateful for that and, and cultivate a way of being that allows you to do that.
Speaker B:
You know what I'm saying?
Speaker B:
Please celebrate those around, around you.
Speaker B:
If somebody around you is doing good, feel good about the fact that you're around people that are doing good.
Speaker B:
Don't feel bad around the fact that some dude next to you is having some success and you're not having that success.
Speaker B:
This is a bad way of being.
Speaker B:
Is, is, we have to, we have to.
Speaker B:
I, I, I mean, honestly, sometimes I'm happier when somebody next to me is successful than I am myself.
Speaker B:
Because when I, something happens to me that is a, is a sign of success that comes with a certain kind of responsibility which is kind of, it can be a double edged sword.
Speaker B:
It's like, oh shit, now I got to be, now I got to be the legendary photographer.
Speaker B:
Whereas somebody calls Eric the Legend.
Speaker B:
I'm like, hell yeah.
Speaker B:
I'm out here, I'm working with legends.
Speaker B:
I have no responsibility for your legendary status, but I can be happy and celebrate it with you.
Speaker B:
And sometimes for me that's easier.
Speaker B:
And I like that idea.
Speaker B:
Never be bitter.
Speaker B:
But bitterness, you know, I've seen many musicians over the years feel like, you know, cats even we've mentioned today, like elders.
Speaker B:
I'll say it.
Speaker B:
I remember meeting Gil Scott Aaron and being so hurt by how bitter he felt that he wasn't getting enough love from the hip hop community.
Speaker B:
And I felt like he was getting love from the hip hop community but he wasn't able to feel it or accept it because he, to him love was attached to a, it had a bunch of zeros in the end of it, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker B:
And I, I feel like, you know, that'll come, you know, I'm saying it'll come.
Speaker B:
It's okay.
Speaker B:
You know, just take.
Speaker B:
Take what they're able to give you.
Speaker B:
That's what you should be taking.
Speaker B:
And you know what I'm saying?
Speaker B:
So to discourage that.
Speaker B:
And then, you know, at the end of the day, man, it's up to everybody to make their own line in regards to this.
Speaker B:
I consider myself dissident in regards to the system we live under.
Speaker B:
I don't agree with it.
Speaker B:
I think there are better ways to live the way we're living right now.
Speaker B:
So I have my lines.
Speaker B:
There's people I won't work for.
Speaker B:
There's people I feel like don't deserve my attention or whatever.
Speaker B:
I live by that.
Speaker B:
I take it incredibly seriously.
Speaker B:
And I, you know, if I say I'm not going to work for the US Military, I'm not going to work for the US Military.
Speaker B:
If I say I'm not going to work for Nike, I'm not going to work for Nike.
Speaker B:
I've turned down six figures from Nike in a period where six figures would have looked good.
Speaker B:
It would have.
Speaker B:
Six figures would look good on me.
Speaker B:
But I turned it down because I didn't believe what they were doing.
Speaker B:
And I feel that's important because I believe that implies a kind of agency, which we're being discouraged to have.
Speaker B:
And I think agency is important.
Speaker B:
Agency is your capacity to say no or say yes to things based on personal choices to do with ethics, to do with morals, to do whatever.
Speaker B:
Other than that, don't shame anybody else for their choices.
Speaker B:
Respect their choices or their choices.
Speaker B:
And other than that, have fun with this shit.
Speaker B:
Follow your heart, Chris Marker.
Speaker B:
Say if it makes your heart beat faster, point yourself at it.
Speaker B:
You know, that's life.
Speaker B:
A life well lived is where you.
Speaker B:
You follow things that make your heart beat faster.
