0:36BI got a lot of family that live out here, so my cousin, he was getting married, he was moving in with, uh, his wife, they were getting a new spot, so his apartment opened up.
0:45AFire.
0:45BRent stabilized.
0:46AYeah.
0:47BPaid virtually next to nothing.
0:49ANice.
0:50BTo be out here. I was able to let that last for like 6 years.
0:52ADamn, W.
0:54BYou know what I’m saying? I was in Harlem. A lot of motherfuckers sleep on Harlem. They think that it’s like, it’s too far, whatever. But it’s a very familial culture.
1:03ARight.
1:04BLike, I knew everybody in the 6-block radius from all the restaurants, all the bars, all the libraries, all the amazing spots. Like, that was the opportunity for me to kind of like really understand our community, power network. So when I wanted to launch ideas, when I wanted to like put things together, I could always count on and reach out to people that were, um, amenable to help. I mean, like, so New York is a spot where if you have integrity and you’re like, yo, um, this is what I’m about, this is what I’m trying to do, and you just offer to listen, you offer time, you offer space, for example.
1:46AYeah.
1:47BYou can pay that multiple times over and get that back, even exponential rates. So for me, it was always about using resources at your disposal first and foremost, whether that’s friends, family, you just met out on the street, anybody and everybody is willing to lend a hand if you are open.
2:10AYeah, I’ve definitely noticed that. I think I’ve been having some pretty interesting conversations with people I’m just now meeting and shit. Just all vibes. Like, New York Fashion Week was dope. I originally came out here for that and shot some content.
2:23BAny good, good joints?
2:26AThe Kid Super shit was fire. I mean, Lauryn Hill performed.
2:29BVery consistent. Very consistent.
2:32AWyclef. So, you know, guys saw 2/3 of the Fugees.
2:36BBig facts.
2:37AThat was cool. Fabio Form was there too. Oh, shit. I think, huh? Yeah, he did. Gospel drill.
2:47BWow.
2:47AI chopped it up with him afterwards too. That was fun. I saw behind the scenes of a fit check with Lil Mama.
2:53BOh, that’s dope.
2:53AThat shit was crazy.
2:54BThat’s dope.
2:54AMet some really interesting characters and shit. What I realized about my -- with being here in New York, this shit a ranked server, bro.
3:00BI’m telling you. I’m telling you. Hey, highest order type shit.
3:03AYou never know. We gonna bust left right here. You never know who you talking to. And this is one of those places where You know, people are willing to talk. Like, I think a lot of people will be like, New Yorkers are rude or whatever. I think they’re just like -- I don’t know, that hasn’t been my experience. The niggas have not -- uh, I’m gonna go straight a little bit, bro.
3:19BWe just, we just be on our shit, right? So, but it’s like, the cool part is you’re always gonna find people running parallel tracks, right? So you can easily, using, using your analogy, party up, right?
3:33AParty up, you know what I’m saying?
3:35BSo, you know, you might, you might be on the verge of Evolving and learning a skill, right? Right. You got somebody that’s already, you know, like, figured those parts out and you just be like, hey yo, here’s how you quickly get to that, right? Right. And you can spam that, draw less mana, right? So you get, you get to the goals faster, you get to the main quest line faster.
3:56ATalk about it. You might fuck around, pick up a legendary item or two out this bitch. Real talk, always, almost always you out here knocking down crates and shit. You never know what you’re gonna find here versus Another place, like don’t get me wrong, Austin is great and all, but one is hot as shit right now. So that definitely is every time I step outside, that shit just oh you feel like you about to die. That’s what I’m saying. That shit just lower my mana, bro. Every time.
4:17BOh real talk, real talk.
4:18ASo boom, buses left.
4:20BOkay.
4:20AAnd then yeah, I mean this is where the the big dogs are coming to play. You know what I mean? Out and about, out in the wild. You can just like I saw Coach K. I walked up and talked to him the other day. Oh shit. It’s like Like random shit like that. So, and they always say if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
4:36BThat is a big fact. That is a big fact.
4:38ASo we’re only one flight away from everywhere in the world, you know. And if you -- people, the thing about it I realized is people be dick riding it. So if you got motion in another city or a major market like this, off rip, you know, that’s gonna add validity and add a stamp to whatever you’re doing and trying to accomplish in other smaller markets. That is a big fact, you know. So Um, it’s been super dope experience. I love the Kids Super. I went to the block party on Sunday too. That was dope. Oh, for real? So he was -- yeah, he was just chilling around. Uh, photographer, curator, community guy who’s like the head of community for Kids Super. I met him and chopped it up with him. He was giving me some insight.
5:14BThat’s dope. What do you, uh -- what was like one piece of like knowledge or something he gave you, or like an idea, a quote, or some thought that Kind of pushed you to either like continue on the path which you’re doing now, refocus, or, um, you know, just presented a different concept for you to rap entirely?
5:36AUm, that’s a good question. It wasn’t super, um, what’s it called, like it was more -- it was less what he said to me in person, something more I saw a video of him, okay, on Instagram after, you know, tapping in with him and such.
5:52BGotcha.
5:52AAnd it was -- he held a gallery, uh, for like some --
5:56Bfor --
5:56Ahe did his gallery showing and he was talking about the book he launched. He was like, everybody should -- could do this. It’s about documenting the moment in culture. Um, and yeah, I just really -- that ignited something in me. It’s like, okay, I should try to post something around these photos I’m taking, this experiment I’m doing, right?
6:18BRight.
6:18AAnd what does that look like? And, uh, and just how tapped in he is to the city. I’m like, okay, now I see. Well, what I learned over the last couple years, I’ve been going to all these different places, dolo, whatever, and with no connections, and being able to build bridges and build, you know, community for myself and create resources, tap pipelines and shit. So I’m like, all right, That’s what’s up. What does that look like here? And how -- and then just building authentic, true community and having this be a hub, you know? So I’m like, I basically saw what he was doing, how he’s going to create community, and that inspired me, you know?
6:56BGot you, got you.
6:57AJust being a vibey nigga out in the scene, you know, knowing everybody and such, right?
7:03BWhat’s real sick and like what I appreciate about, uh, you and what you bring to any place that you Uh, pull up, obviously Vibes, but, um, it was the concept relating to Proof of Vibes and being able to, to fully curate safe environments for folks like us, for us.
7:24AYeah.
7:24BAnd, but also for anybody really.
7:26AYeah.
7:27BTo get kind of acclimated with how rapidly, like, moving this space gets, um, how things change at the drop of a dime, um, where the meta moves. You were able to Completely tell people, hey, yo, like, this space is, um, you could tap in at any moment, right? And so maybe what you need is like an environment to, to re -- to like reorient yourself so that you can get acclimated to the environment and then pick your lane.
7:57AYeah.
7:57BYou know, like, I loved how you were collaborating with NEAR a lot.
8:00AYeah.
8:01BUm, and like that developer track and getting people interested and curious in building tools, building systems, building platforms. Also being able on the, uh, entertainment and the creative side, getting people to showcase their work, getting people to express themselves, uh, whether it’s vocally or whether it’s through playing music and things of that nature. So you kind of covered a lot of different, uh, uh, let me see, like, I guess like interest areas so that, um, you know, people could, could Find themselves within within the stuff, and so to like see you do that here, I’m very curious to kind of see what that looks like for a music and actually crypto event. Actually, I think where I met Greg the second time. Oh, for real?
8:42BOh wait, yeah. Not for that specifically, but I do know I’ve been here.
8:47AWhich way I want?
8:50BI smoked my weed. I felt too high when I arrived. Ah ha ha! True, true, true. I’ve learned. I’ve learned something. I don’t pull up stones anymore.
8:56ANo, no, no más.
8:57BNo more. No more.
8:58ADon’t smoke weed no more?
8:59BThat’s not what I said. I just activated war using it already. My first impression.
9:04AAll right, let’s keep it going. I knew about the Ace Hotel in LA. That was a legendary time.
9:11BThat was.
9:12AI seen you know who Travis Big Trav? Yeah. Okay. So I saw him order hibiscus tea in the Ace Hotel in LA. That shit changed my brain chemistry.
9:22BYou’re like hibiscus.
9:23AYeah, I’m like this nigga too player.
9:27BYou right here with it?
9:27AYeah. I feel we pick somewhere not cold outside.
9:32BNo, that’s true.
9:34AThat’s facts. But yeah, definitely, uh, I’m excited about spending more time here, um, and trying to get this experiment off the ground. Um, I really just like to chase curiosities, bro. That’s what I want my life to be. I hear the shit I’m excited about and curious about. And I just love how here I can just walk outside in any direction and just go find inspiration, right? You know what I mean? Like, that shit don’t really happen too. And I gotta drive over in Austin, I gotta go to certain places, right?
10:06BRight. But here it’s like you can find spot in the block that you are, you can find it pretty much no matter where you go. There’s always a drop-in point.
10:16ASo yeah, exactly.
10:17BYeah, no, no, following curiosity is It’s dope. It’s kind of, uh, I kind of am ruled by that myself. Like, just curiosity, like, and spontaneity are like cousins. Exactly. That’s good. When something feels interesting, I’m like, yeah, yeah, I think I’m gonna see what that’s about. And then it kind of really opens me up to something that I wouldn’t have considered otherwise.
10:41AExactly.
10:41BYou know, actually, that’s kind of my shit too.
10:42ADivinity.
10:43BYeah. So, um, it, you know, like when I was explaining kind of like Clubhouse and NFT stuff. I forget the lady’s name, the girl’s name, but when we were chatting with her, it kind of talked about how, like, because of COVID we all had this interest in trying to connect somehow. And Clubhouse was like this opportunity where we could all kind of like chat and talk. That created sort of like the inflection where curiosity and spontaneity kind of went hand in hand. Because it was like, oh, like, you seem interested in this. We mentioned the same thing, like, yo, biggest football idea right now. Boom.
11:22BAnd recording.
11:23AYeah.
11:24BDM. Next thing you know, tomorrow we on Twitter with like, yo, we just did this thing type shit. And it was just like, so we, we all had this, uh, uh, maniacal urgency to just do shit and to like make things come to life. Hey, I think because we were really bored. with the perspectives that like, damn, like outside is death. So like we gotta find life inside. Mm-hmm. Um, and, uh, yeah, bro. But like the fact that we, we could be outside, um, and to carry on that same energy physically, I think is important because now we’ve got all of these digital tools that can keep us in a way like our own prisons if we don’t find ways to to touch grass, to go outside, and to connect with people face to face, right?
12:12ASo let me ask you something because that made me think. I was talking to Devin Moore today, uh, about this. Yeah, I was asking him about just his experience. And, uh, basically what he was saying to me is since he’s been focused more so on building online community, his experience a lot different. I, me personally, I’m always more IRL based, like, and being in person. But from somebody like you who’s really good at building online community and scaling brands and, you know, what is that relationship? Is there a, like, when you think about the online presence building versus IRL presence building, how do you think about that? And like, what are some of the things you try to focus on?
12:53BFor me, I feel like my goals are always trying to find ways to make sure if I start with one, I end with the other.
13:02AInteresting.
13:03BSo this recent thing I’m working on, it’s like, it’s called Bite Party, and it’s essentially like collective coordination game where there’s a digital apple, and that by buying and burning these Bite tokens, you start eating away at the apple.
13:20AShout out to all the eaters.
13:21BIf you eat 50% of the apple, then the Fees that came from all the trading activity distributed to all the people who participated. So you had to buy and like bite the apple, right? And so, but that’s just part one, digital portion of the community, a performance piece, an idea around coordination. And based upon the fact that like the SEC has created a 5-year innovation sort of like opportunity to explore what ownership of tokenized stocks could look like, whether you get voting rights, whether you get a chance to kind of organize around and like push policy in some form or like influence product, right? Then the meaningful step 2 is now that I’ve organized this from all around, all the edges of the earth, now how do I translate and in many cases transmute that energy into physical environments. So that doesn’t mean that all these people have to flock together, but that does mean that like one input equals another output. And so if I started with IRL, I gotta continue the conversation URL, right? So that I can bring them back, right? And it always becomes like this, you know, infinite river.
14:41AYeah.
14:41BSo that’s sort of like my idea is that I, I never want to stay Here, right? And I know I can’t always be out here, so I gotta -- I’m trying to find the healthy balance between the two.
14:54AYeah, me too. And I definitely think like URL has more infinite scalability, you know what I mean? Like IRL, I think, has quicker trust building. Yeah, you know, like you build trust faster IRL in some regards. I mean, if you use certain tonality and visual appeals and certain like things in your brand, you could build trust and such.
15:17BRight.
15:17ABut I know IRL has a way higher return on investment. I just haven’t really mastered that or even like, you know, I feel like I’m leaving a lot on the table. That’s what I’m trying to say. I’m thinking about like, how do I revamp? How do I look back? Like, I don’t know. Yeah.
15:40BSo I’ll say there’s truth to like leaving stuff on the table. But what I will say is don’t cut, don’t sell yourself short, right? Like what we sort of all collectively experienced between 19, 20, 21, when like that our like sort of class of people came in to ’24 really, I think was kind of like the thing where we all were like, damn, is this shit really working for us? We all kind of had this climb, this hill to climb of imposter syndrome, not because of our own making or design, but just by nature of the fact that there’s this massive groundswell of opportunity and with opportunity, smells like, uh, people that will take advantage, people that will sour experience, people that will take it -- like, people that will be predators in certain ways.
15:40BBut then for the rest of us, we’re kind of -- for many of us, we started with ideas and means of execution, but shortly followed it up with, um, protests. And like a lot of strong dissent and discourse, um, on socials. So like Twitter was always a battleground, man, just to like get ideas out or just to say our point of view and for it to be respected. And that’s where like IRL really would have worked in those cases to have built better trust vectors.
17:21BRight. But because we had this like 9 months to a year of like no contact in a certain sense. In many cases, like, the biases and things had festered, but it wasn’t until people started to actually see us in person where they were like, oh shit. But at that point, the damage had been done. Right. The trust had been severed, and it took much longer. But by that point in time too, many of us that were a part of some of these really unique companies very early on all got dropped. when the money started coming in.
17:53AYeah.
17:54BUm, projects stopped getting supported when the money came in. Uh, alliances got cut short.
18:01ANiggas switched up.
18:02BYou know what I’m saying? So there were a lot of interesting things we had to contend with. And so, yeah, while there was a lot left on the table, I think ultimately, like, with the resources we built for ourselves and the, like, willingness to, like, I guess in a way suffered together through it, man.
18:21ATalk about it. We built suffering together.
18:24BThe most amazing shit that like is not only like continually referenced, but is used as like the baseline for what is considered good. Yeah, right. Like proof of vibes, Zoratopia, shout out to Latasha, right? Or like Topia now at this point. Um, from like Mint Fund to like Nouns. So like Blackhead and all that other type of shit, like me, Forefront being the biggest sort of thing before like Bankless and shit started to kind of eat away at all that, right? Yeah. So there we’re at the fore of many of these things, but we just never got the support to sustain it. where we could continue to provide that value in a consistent way. And honestly, in a boring way, like we never get a chance to get boring.
19:27BWe get money for a little bit. It’s exciting, it’s fun. Yeah. You get their feel-good story and then it’s like, okay, yeah, like onto the next. Like they’ll say, hey, in a brief they’ll say, hey, I want, like, what we did with this, but like, they’ll use words like, but like more like tighter.
19:45AHmm.
19:46BBut not, not trying to say like upscale or not trying to say, you know, like, uh, uh, uh, luxury or whatever the case is. The signaling words that kind of say that this was good for being what it was, but not good because of the actual mental intellectual capability to pull it off and the connections needed to pull it off. And so, you know, we would talk about extraction and then get extracted at the same time.
20:16AShit, diabolical.
20:17BYeah, very.
20:18AYeah, man, no crying in the casino.
20:21BNah, none, none, none at all.
20:24CI will say I am very thankful for all the -- it’s about the friends you met along the way, you know what I mean? And experience I had You know, because he was able to go worldwide with this shit, you know, and build lifelong friendships and do all types of crazy shit. Like, Russ was on tour, bro. That shit was wild.
20:41BWorldwide Russ for a reason.
20:43AMan, like, from the time we spent fucking Brussels, right, seeing other niggas out. I remember I seen a George Floyd mural in Brussels and I was like, wow, this shit really crazy, you know, to Exposure therapy is a real thing, you know?
20:59BYeah.
20:59ALike, once you’re able to be in a realm that is a server that is different than what you’re used to and being around characters that are exposing you to new ideas or show you new ways of living, right? You know, you no longer can look back the same. You know, that’s a fact. Once those veils are removed, it’s like you can’t go back no more.
21:19BSide quest turned to main quest.
21:21AYou feel me? So I’m just out here trying to XP farm. I feel like that’s what time I’m on. I’m out here scouring new parts of the map. That’s why I like New York though, because I feel like each neighborhood is its own little, you know, map. Shit, wow. You could be in Brooklyn, Bushwick versus Bed-Stuy versus Williamsburg versus Lower East Side versus, you know, Coney Island and shit.
21:42BAll that.
21:43AYeah, it’s wild.
21:44BYou said it, bro.
21:48ABut shout out to Philly right now. That’s all I really matter. Hey, motherfucking Brown on this shit.
21:52BTwo oh, bro.
21:53AEagles up going crazy. It’s like how do how do how do Phillies doing?
21:59BYou know it. I don’t follow baseball.
22:00AYeah, me neither.
22:01BI’m like the Sixers, the process.
22:06AYeah.
22:07BIt’s trusted. We about to see that it’s proven.
22:09AYeah, man. Yeah, fact. That’s all matters.
22:11BShout out to Jim Hurts.
22:12ARight.
22:13BI don’t care anybody say. People say he not clutch.
22:16AMan, fuck all that. He just showed you. He showed you, man. Shut up.
22:19BThey said Smitty can’t catch.
22:22ANah.
22:22BSorry.
22:23AHow about now?
22:23BThat crazy drive was nuts.
22:25ACome on. How about now?
22:25BYeah, we may have some injuries. We’re still watching y’all niggas.
22:29ARight.
22:29BIt’s nothing.
22:30AIt happens.
22:31BSixers, bro. First of all, opening day.
22:33AWho they playing opening day?
22:35BWe play Knicks opening day, I think.
22:40AOh, yeah. Facts.
22:41BWe play Knicks opening day and then Christmas, Lakers.
22:44ALakers. That’s crazy.
22:45BYeah, yeah.
22:46AIn Philly or in like LA?
22:47BIn Philly. In Philly. It’s, huh? Yeah, yeah. And it’s nuts because the Lakers team -- I forgot somebody on Twitter was like, yo, like, we going back to, uh, uh, uh, civil rights.
23:03AYeah, for sure. Yeah, that’s a crazy fact. Uh, Sixers. Yeah, yeah.
23:11BHey, dog.
23:11AYeah, fair.
23:13BHey man, Bron, Jaylen Brown, DJ Edge Cole.
23:17AShit crazy.
23:17BOh my God.
23:19AAnd B, Tyrese Maxey. Tyrese Maxey. That was a crazy lineup right there. Then you got people come off the bench. You got, what’s that dude name from? He used to play for the Portland Trail Blazers.
23:27BI know you talking about.
23:28AAnfernee Simons.
23:29BYes sir.
23:29AThat nigga nice.
23:30BHe very nice, bro. Our bench could get you, could get niggas started.
23:33AThat’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying.
23:35BYeah.
23:35AIt’s a beautiful time to be a Sixers fan. I remember niggas had Thaddeus Young. Ellen Brand, Drew Holiday, Andre Goddard, bro.
23:42BYeah, I mean, talking about the new AI. Yeah, yeah, bro, there’s only one AI.
23:47AYeah.
