Nas: Illmatic (1994)

[00:00]In 2020, four friends decided to listen to every one of the greatest 500 albums as decided by Rolling Stone Magazine. This resulted in a text chain that celebrated the music, excoriated the order, and led us to making this podcast. We are far from experts, and we promise to do almost no research. All opinions are our own unless you disagree. Please sit back and enjoy. Beck did it better. Hee hee hee. This is album 44, Illmatic by Nas from 1994. Guys, you know, this song, like this whole record was about Nas growing up in Queensbridge, so it made me wonder, what was it like for us growing up? And I'm going to put in this sound clip. Flashback to our youth. Hey, what's up, everybody? It's Wolfman Rob on KKROB. All we're going to do is take in time four favorite boys and what they were like growing up.

[01:03]Yeah. Is that a one-off? Midwest. Ah, yes. Are we going to hear Rob's part? Midwest. Let me break it. Let me break it down for one and all. I want to talk about us when we were small. Sit right back. Let me tell you the truth, ladies. This is about the Beck did it better babies. Matt grew up with sports wall to wall. He was always out shooting those basketballs. When it was too cold, you have to assume. He was out hitting balls, but now with his room. Russ grew up in a similar way. Don't forget he went to high school with Green Day. He was in a rap group. Don't forget the bad boys. He even had Santa. To deliver the toys. Now Aaron grew up in Iowa, which is quite far. Down there, nobody even owns a car. He got around on an old horse and buggy. When his parents went out, he'd practice. Please believe me. No.

[02:01]When Rob was young, he never had no job. His room was messy. He was called a slob. At junior high dances, he always was alone. But he recorded radio shows on a microphone. Oh, no. He recorded hit songs. Yes. He recorded hit songs. He recorded hit songs. He always did dream about doing his own show. But that dream went away as time passed him by. And now he's stuck doing this crap with these three guys. Oh! Midwest. I'm trying to act out. My life's a disaster. Just recording is my therapy for me. When you want to hear about my greatest albums of all time. Yeah, yeah. That was the most depressing thing I've ever heard in my life. Look it up online. It was literally the last verse. It was on my earphones. If you don't want to hear from guys who chat and then they get off track. It's going to give us a chance to talk about the hottest letter brands. I've got the very great podcast for you, Jack. All right. Beck did it better. Okay. Aaron, don't get so mad about that. Relax. All right.

[03:00]I'm here with three guys who hear about Queensbridge and they want to know what Trump is. That's a bridge joke. I declare that's a good joke for dummies. Isn't that a chess joke? What? No. Did you guys know that I played in a bridge league for like two years? I did know that. Yeah. I would be, I bet half the age of every other person there. It was like the number of me's and the number of oxygen tanks were never equal. It was always more oxygen tanks. I don't know why I said the equal. She said greater than, but we would play bridge and, um, and it was like, these people were so competitive. And I had Jenny be my partner once for this big tournament where we got points. Oh, that went well. And Jenny comes in. She has no idea how to play bridge. None. She, I told her to practice. She said, no. I'm not going to do it. I said, okay. And then, um, during the game, she would be listening to conversations at other tables. So when it was her turn to bid, she also had no idea what was going on because she would be looking over here and somebody say, excuse me, it's your turn to play. And she'd be like, what?

[04:00]I mean, she's just listening to other conversations. All right. Isn't, uh, isn't bill, isn't bill Gates and Warren Buffett famous for like playing a bridge game? Like bill Gates would fly in just to play bridge. Yeah. Oh yeah. They're big. That's yeah. Yeah. My family bridges, bridges, big in my family. So I was like, oh, I'll do this. And then I was like, oh, that's right. I'm terrible at math and I can't remember anything. I'm getting destroyed by people who are like double my age. I don't know if you caught that earlier, but the math works both ways. It's reciprocal. And you're not only shit. Maybe you can let Matt sit in for you. Next time you got a family game, Matt would probably fit in perfectly for that game. Yeah. I can still play a mean game of bridge though. I got Russell in Minnesota. Russell, how are you doing? Online dating is a bitch and it makes me cry. That's why I get high. Cause it's never known when I'm going to get. Oh, literally and figured it out. Wow. Note to self. Russell talked to me before the podcast and said, you need to bleep the last word. I'm definitely not going to forget. All right. I've got Matt in Minneapolis.

[05:00]Matt, how are you doing? Excellent. Just excellent. Rob. Thanks for having me. I love that. All right. I've got Aaron out in California. Aaron, how are you doing? You guys, I'm doing great. I'm very excited to be here talking about this album with the two men who taught me the most about rooting. Rooting for the villain and how much fun that is. That is Nas and Russell J. Let's get it rolling. Yes. Yes. What does that have to do with villains? Watch a flick. Ellen and root for the villain. Russell always rooted for the villain. What's Ellen for the villain? What are you talking about? Have you listened to this album? Rob? It's called Illmatic by now. It's released in 1994. I thought Illmatic was named after a guy on his block. It's a line in, in, in one of the songs. He says, I'm sit back, chill and watch a flick. Ellen and root for the lyric shaming me right away. You know, I listen to every lyric. Good job. Okay. Just cause I didn't have this CD in my car growing up in high school. I don't know every lyric. I wouldn't listen to they may be giants. You, I wouldn't make you listen to them. I'm a chance for a week. And then she wasn't in high school for me though. It was during my, it was during my hip hop message board era, which was my twenties.

[06:00]Not embarrassing for anyone. I didn't realize that. I know you guys missed that whole joke. You could have riffed on that for days. That was in your twenties when you were wrong. I'm not going to give it to you. Oh my God. I thought you were like 13. Did you guys think he was 20 for that? I thought he was like 12. No. So that's like my Yahoo fantasy football name is I like big, but 75. I thought your, your team name was Rob's gang bang gang. No, no, no, no. That's it had to be turned to RGBG once we started using work emails to check our fantasy team. RGBG? No, but my Yahoo name, cause I need a name at yahoo.com. It was, uh, Oh, I should probably shouldn't say it on the podcast, but it's, it was, I like big butts and a number. And I was like, I, cause I liked that. I liked that song at the time. So now when I'm like in a league with my dad or I started NCAA, no, and I can't change it. So, so I have to send my dad like, Hey, you want to be in my bracket? Sign up with, I like big butt 75 super bracket.

[07:00]Rob, I have a very similar experience. I'm 41 years old. When I was in like high school or college, I signed up for a Yahoo account for fantasy football. And then I played, you guys were talking about bridge. I used to play online Euchre on Yahoo. Oh, my screen name was sad. My screen name was. Pile of shit at yahoo.com. Oh, here's the funniest thing though. Here's the funniest thing. So when you play like online Yahoo or like Yahoo, you turn the text, the voice on, you have a, excuse me, what username do you want to pick? I think I'll be pile of shit. Okay. The Yahoo, like you, you get a ranking. So every time you win, your ranking kind of goes up. And when you lose, you go down. So you're always trying to like, get up higher on this rank. And so like one weekend, I just got crushed for like a week in a row. Like they kept, I kept losing, losing, losing, and my ranking kept going down. And when your ranking goes down, people at good tables, won't let you play with them.

[08:03]And so I was like, fuck it. I need to start a new account. So I started a new account, which is called no pile of shit too. And so now if you go and look at like our, if you guys go look at the name, if you guys go look at our Yahoo fantasy football account, my, my screen name is pile of shit too. And that's why it's that screen name. So your solution to suck it at Euchre was to just make a fake account. Like, Oh my God, nobody will play with me. I need to make a fake account. Russell, it's the saddest story I've ever heard in my life. It was the same name. I just added a two on the end of it. You wanted to play online Euchre with you. Yeah. So if you guys ever were playing online Euchre with pile of shit three, you know, I'm going to reset. One more time, but this comes up all the time. Cause you're right. Like Matt was, I was talking with Matt earlier tonight and he was talking about, uh, an online incident, like basketball pool on Yahoo that Rob organized.

[09:01]And I was going to join it this year, but I heard all your kids were going to be in it. I'm like, I can't put a pile of shit to submission into the basketball bracket. So I didn't even play. So somebody out there is like pile of shit too. God, I wonder who got pile of shit one. Not me. It was the same guy. It was me. It was the same guy. This can't be the same guy. Pile of shit too. Can't be the same guy. Pile of shit one is so bad at Euchre, but pile of shit two is so good. They can't be the same person. I will play with pile of shit two. Hey, who's just partner in my table? Oh, pile of shit one. Yeah. I don't want to play. I don't want to play with a guy with that name. Walk away. Because I'm horrible. No, they don't. They just don't want to play with a guy named pile of shit one. Well, it's pile of shit two. It's like, oh, I don't want to play with a guy with that name. It's like, oh, I don't want to play with a guy with that name. Bigger and better. Bigger and better. I'm going to do it. Oh, my God. That's the name of this podcast. Now, pile of shit two, bigger and better. What album are we even talking about?

[10:00]Oh, yeah. This is because Aaron was making fun of me. He was shaming me. So, listen, like a retired train, we're off the rails already. Let's go right to our voicemail. So stupid. I'm not going to kiss my ass. Dumb shit listeners. They can't even tell what we're doing. Guys, we're going to do this. We're going to do this. We're going to do this. We're going to do this. We're going to do this. the biggest pile of shits in the world radiohead i listen to all the albums online throughout this podcast uh just to kind of be on the journey with you guys and it's been great here's your things oh psycho get to hear stuff that i really like that i hadn't heard in a while mostly it's been awesome uh but i've listened to radiohead in my office co-worker walks in and he looks at me and he's like hey you okay if you're depressed so this is like some like dolores clayborne shit this guy's gonna take us out to the woods break our legs and they make us do like a podcast for him he's like hey i really i like you guys like i talk with you and sometimes i record it do you guys think you could like play me talking

[11:02]with the podcast on another podcast it's like i'm part of the podcast that would be kind of incredible what a sicko this guy is this this voice does sound familiar to me this may be the same person who requested that we put the title of you next week's episode in the write-up because he can't figure out how to do the the website for rolling stone so he is definitely one of the dumb shit listeners that website is terrible no question i was just kidding i love this guy doing uh so yeah thanks for that do you guys handle it well i don't know like it's crappy content so kudos for you know following through it that's the back of our shirt and i'm sure you guys better but playing the monday night football outro was would have been completely appropriate after the three things about the album and then uh just going straight to the back to the better theme song and just ending it there so i don't know but hey keep up the good work guys really appreciate the what the what the fuck is going on is there like they're like wanting they're like micromanaging like oh put the play the sound clip and then roll out and then

[12:01]they didn't want to hear radiohead either any radiohead content i don't know man i i thought we had a nice productive discussion about radiohead we all went home feeling good oh no it was a disaster god damn it the episode was a disaster this guy's right ernie's a podcast feeling like good about himself and not like totally beat down it's like oh that's a bad episode i'm wait matt i feel like matt's starting to steam and he's gonna start yelling at our listeners to keep their negativity to themselves right now no you know to be to be honest i think he he was very fair he just said this is no good i just i don't like it you know i think i don't know he said the content was bad he's not ripping on radiohead anything like that i don't agree with him wait did he rip radiohead or did he rip us no he's ripping radioheads okay he's saying he's saying the radiohead content you know it's not good content and i said you know he could be talking about us but yeah russell here somebody criticized something he automatically thinks he's talking about us next time next time i next time i pick up a woman on a date i'm gonna

[13:01]play radiohead so if it doesn't work out i could just blame it on that fucking terrible band man i think if you i think i think there are tracks on the in rainbows album that are panty droppers i think but in rainbows i think there's i think there's something you could do you can go with yeah okay but again hey you know what you know i think we sorry dad we get a little bit he's like that's okay son i'm more of a panty pull to the cider oh no don't worry about me that's gonna be like a five second bleep i think you know what i think i don't mind when people call and say they don't like the you know the uh the album stuff like that i think that's part of our whole process yeah i'm glad they're getting the stuff out and you know it's good to hear that people are actually listening right i think um i think we can officially say right that we're we're not we don't have tens of listeners anymore we have dozens of listeners so our dozens of listeners you know i appreciate when they call in but i'm with you man like to hear they're looking for a euchre game it's pile of shit too at yahoo i have no

[14:04]no standards on who i play with and i do table talk so my heart my heart bleeds for you trump russell i think we should set up like uh i don't know whenever this thing is whenever this thing's like june 22nd at 6 p.m i think we should have an online tournament with just join russell and euchre i don't know what i'm more embarrassed about that i'm on this podcast or that i have two pile of shit usernames for yahoo card games that's that's a tough that's close that is close horse a piece you mistype in your name when you go into yahoo you're like why am i no i logged into the long pile of shit account that i have i thought it was pile of shit 2.5 i never got that far did you use this email to sign up for all your dating apps this might be one of the problems russell is when they're like oh contact me off bumble i'm pile of shit too i have not done that but i have signed up for many fantasy football leagues college basketball

[15:00]tournament stuff like that yes oh my god all right let's finish the voicemail listen every week and uh again listen to all the albums just to make sure that i'm keeping up with it uh cheers this is an all-star listener cheers to you listener all right let's get a pretty good call how do you call the backline rob what's the number the number is 802-277-BEC that's 802-277-2325 i think uh and that's the backline call or leave a number and again if you do text sometimes you'll get a little text back for me and sometimes that text has a little picture of my toesies coming at you uh 1443 is aaron is text on his pager all right let's get into rolling going i feel like we barely talked about anything it's time to see what everybody's up to it's time for rolling going all right aaron i'm gonna go first uh so let me tell you about my rolling going

[16:03]uh i want to say first of all this is also your bitch my screen is so big i can't find my mouse okay it's also your spanking of the week not often you hear that from rob it's too big as a bad little boy it's time for big papa rob to give you the discipline to do what you're supposed to do why is it so long we're getting spanked again yes spanking and the reason is in a row here i was gonna put this into its own i was gonna put this into its own section of and i was gonna make my own sting called rob's joke was actually funny this is where we're gonna go back and we're gonna see that rob's joke that he told last week was actually funny debatable okay well let's see what you guys think of this do you know how many people i had to wait oh my god russell i've had to change diapers and i've had to wait for the family bathroom and then some woman comes skulking out and i'm like oh you get out of here like you just spread down the whole bathroom and she's got 20 nipple clamps all over yeah no not that far that's not the joke toilet seat so

[17:02]you know that wasted my time trying to sniff it all right so aaron rolling going how's it going with you no laugh i got no laughs from you guys well i mean i just thought sniffing toilet seats at the airport was a normal thing i didn't think that was anything that deserved being laughed at no i feel like wait do i need to slap you guys next week for not laughing at that i was wondering why on yahoo answers pile of shit too is asking what should toilet seats smell like wait is that what you'd ask what should am i the asshole for sniffing the toilet oh no i feel like we're heading toward a situation where every week's podcast is about last week's podcast and it's a recursive kind of situation we never get out of it's inception our callers are just now talking i think we're okay we're the clear we would never pull up a joke from the past and just say it again and again and not try to think of anything new aaron that'd be crazy so russell matt rob what

[18:01]do we do how do we make rob feel better how do we make him feel good does it does he need a standing ovation what what can we do to uh help help rob feel better about his his excellent joke and move forward with an excellent podcast this week now listen if my kid hears me say that like on a podcast and is like oh that's my dad am i proud of that joke no i'm not proud of it it makes me think about decisions i make in my life and like what i think is funny and why i think that and it kind of makes me sad actually kind of like the intro to this podcast but it was funny the idea of me in a family bathroom with my kid but first like putting him down to change the diaper would be like but first yeah okay that's how i had to tell it i think i just had to change a little bit thank you for that you had to let it breathe a little bit you had to let us get the reaction you're right i need to slow down my jokes yeah get into it right through everybody's listening to the one and a half speed anyway so you gotta slow down oh my jokes are like a hot tub full of tapioca pudding you're just gonna slowly sink in until it feels good all right

[19:03]speaking of pudding i did have a kid the other day who i heard in my class say to another kid hey do you want some pudding and my problem is i immediately knew what was coming next my ears perked up because i know that the answer is putting these nuts in your mouth which is exactly what the students said no they did not say that oh yeah well they said putting these and then they went like these nuts these nuts and they kind of mumbled it but i was like excuse me we need to go i said come on we need to go talk outside and i said i said please this is me saying i said you cannot say these nuts in class that's inappropriate and i had the hardest time i almost started laughing but i was like i was like please download beck did it better yeah would you like to go to the philosophy department with this feel how soft these nuts are i know i would i would i was going to tell him to go see the assistant principal he'd say who's assistant principal who's assistant principal who's assistant principal who's assistant principal in principle i'd say lee gandhi but every time we play a game somebody always has imagined dragons

[20:06]and i know what they're saying and then i tried to explain to another teacher and they looked at me like i was the worst person in the world so i was like fine i'm not why am i trying to spread the word about these nuts so hold on so so these nuts jokes are these rigor they're with the youths right now yes the eighth grade teacher goes i wonder why they kept saying dn to each other dn and i go oh they're saying d's nuts but just the two letters i was like kids are so smart kids listen to the podcast rob or what absolutely not oh my god you know what would happen then if i got fired i would just be doing this podcast full time you guys would be on here like four times a week with me we'd be cranking through episodes we'd be done to 500 albums in a year cranking be so good i can we'd be at we'd be at the humpty dance by like 2023 oh my god we that should be on the list honestly uh we're just at the end he goes and also i had a friend who said he that he did the verse that says i use also word

[21:03]that don't mean nothing like lupin looped it looped it like that's part of this i screwed it up i should let you go i should let you go no i should let you go okay now first of all i'm not asking you to apologize i just want to point out you were wrong that was a funny joke you were wrong don't apologize for being wrong i'm not accepting those apologies thank you it's like i'm a one-man show here i don't get it i'm apologizing we apologize for apologizing i just think sometimes matt and aaron don't laugh because they like getting those spankings from you rob they enjoy it i think about it okay fine guess what now that we're gonna wallow in it i got one more rolling going i got in a twitter fight with somebody today oh and i tried to play it so cool i replied to a media person in the media who put up a post of the guy who owns like all these hockey teams who made a checklist of after he almost died in a plane crash ted leon i saw this yeah i didn't see how it turned out for you rob yeah your brother actually liked it

[22:02]what i said oh it was the little rosy the little rosy little that gives it credibility little rosy likes it i mean great 80 of them were about how much he wanted to make money he's made great decisions oh no 80 80 percent of them he's coming how am i the one trying to keep this on track this is outrageous 80 percent of the things on this list where this guy wanted to make money and it wasn't just a little he's like i want to be worth a billion i want to be worth a million it was like and so i just wrote on there and i was one of the first comments on a pretty popular account and i said this list bums me out it's gross that after a near-death thing he would like you know just want to make more money and then this guy gets on my case about it he's like why don't you mind your own business and i go oh the guy who's the guy it's just a random guy from oh some dude okay not so then i reply and i go oh thanks steve for telling me how i should feel i tweeted me back and i said yeah i'm i'm sure that he can do whatever he wants but this list makes me

[23:01]sick yeah the main did you use the podcast account for this or not no this is my personal what the hell we could have gotten some followers selfish brick so then the guy goes yeah just don't worry about his goals worry about yourself and i wrote so then i had to go in then i did that thing and i was trying to be cool about it and not get worked up but it's all i was thinking about and i was checking like every 30 seconds to see if this guy's replied so then i do that thing where i have to go back through his twitter account find something from 13 years ago and i was like i did that once on facebook i got in a huge fight about gun control with some guy down in texas right getting a giant fight with him he it turns out i do a google search it turns out that this guy tried to start his own church and everybody he got so mad at the church he left and tried to start his own church and it made the little town newspaper that he was in and i knew the restaurant that he owned so i started replying to him and putting uh like things on his restaurant of like i ate here and i got a little bit of money and i got a little bit of money and i got a little bit bugs in my salad zero stars and i would post that to him and then i wrote whoa i wrote hey at

[24:04]the end i wrote hey did you really go off and start your own church lol and then i replied again and i said hey did that work out i can't imagine that worked out come on i'm serious i really want to know if you're if your homemade church worked out and he never replied and i was like this is this is the best fight and i won and this is when i didn't have a job so this took up from like 10 a.m to like 2 p.m the whole day that's a job right there my kids are like daddy daddy pay with me and i'm like i can't you got paid in satisfaction did your wife put all of your assets into an llc before you slandered this man or not no he had started his own church we already have the copyright thing hanging over us now rob we don't need this too well the problem was you know what this guy's name was martin luther martin luther these nuts oh you you realize he's got 99 treaties but are you sure that nobody has your name your your name out there um like on this podcast like is

[25:03]your last name or part of anything that we've got out there because you realize that if somebody ever really got pissed at you i mean they would have oodles and oodles and oodles of things could start listening and come back to you on right i can't even imagine who would get mad at me well i'm such a sweet guy who would get mad i know i i'm with you but like aaron's been writing weeks writing those words past the margin oh that's another nonsense i don't even know how to start this hey you idiot i saw you watch sylvester stallone's cobra the other day i mean that's what my facebook says it's like hey i just watch aliens wow what a good movie like oh you think aliens a good movie idiot i mean there's not there's not much there it's pretty thin all right speaking of not much there rolling going aaron how's it going with you oh it's great i had a very exciting time i'm laughing that's a funny joke that was okay guys i am not ringing a bell i am not ringing a bell outside of target discriminating against

[26:05]homosexuals i am not the laugh salvation army okay okay now that's a good joke that one's that's a good joke rob i'll give you that i gotta dig dig dig give us some money unless you know unless yeah the coin goes in the slot if you know what i mean it's not two slots and there's not two coins my rolling going is about going out to dinner uh we've made our shirt all right okay so what does the shirt say the shirt says he's a shit too at yahoo.com on the back it says what was it big poopoo times two number two times two or whatever it was and on the side it says what does it say i just said it what was it two slots somebody how's it going with you tpublic.com slash back to the better tonight we uh i'm very

[27:04]very excited very happy we went out for dinner tonight as a family for the first time in over a year so we went out to our one of our favorite pubs down here on college avenue yeah what's it called how was the whopper at this burger game this was the golden squirrel in rockridge in uh in oakland it's one of my son's favorite places so we went to went out to the golden squirrel he was a perfect angel he was wonderful he ate his kids fish and chips he watched an episode of uh wait a minute i enjoyed a sandwich it was wonderful why is your kid eating fish and chips i'm i'm not making fun of your kid but why don't they eat like chicken fingers or macaroni i why do they so they have both of them they have both of those on the menu they have the kids menu there is the cheeseburger uh pasta with the red sauce yeah chicken fingers uh macaroni cheese he he chose the fish and chips he likes the macaroni macaroni didn't have truffles and that's below

[28:00]aaron's son's standards if there's no truffles in the macaroni he likes to have the fish and chips are you guilty of pushing him toward the weirdest meal did you do that no no because i was inside ordering uh when he was outside choosing no he likes the fish and chips oh my god he was outside in the car he was going through the patio he was out on the patio because there was a line to order we're still dealing with like you know covid protocols and the like so we were we were i was inside ordering but um i was really stoked follow the story anymore all all all day today i thought you know the one thing the one thing i need to drink today is some hennessy because naz is one of the all-time great hennessy rappers he's got so many great lines about henny tonight aaron i'm also drinking some with you i love it russell so i didn't want to buy a whole bottle because i don't usually drink it russell i perhaps if you bought a whole bottle but i i went to the bar to get myself a shot of hennessy after the the family was situated and enjoying their meal and lo and behold the the

[29:04]bar was empty and i was sure he was going to make fun of me for drinking hennessy but i had to do it anyway because i'd been looking for it all looking forward to it all day you say it like that like a real sniveling worm no no no please sir don't make fun of me i want some hennessy he'd be like why would i make fun of you if hennessy that's even worse than what you these people like these people know me there so the and like as a white man you try to order it in like the most you know the straightest way possible like i'm not going to call it henny i'm not going to try to like be down or anything you know and i'm going to try to like order it in like the straightest way possible now aaron are you doing your five minute comedy stand-up comedy bit no white guys order hennessy like this no so i just tried to play it straight like white guys get popcorn at the movie theater they get it like this i got to the bar and i was like oh man like this is gonna be super dorky but i gotta do it because this is what i wanted to have i needed to have some hennessy and um and so the guy you know very nicely is like okay and the woman who i know there who's like knows my

[30:01]typical order was like oh oh um all right and uh and so he you know he kind of looks at me like well this is a strange thing and i had i said you know typical rob thing i was like well tonight i'm recording a podcast about naz and of course he doesn't ask what's the name of the podcast no could i listen no not happening but very nicely pours me a shot of hennessy and then when he hands it to me he says hey anything's possible so you guys anything is possible tonight on this podcast i'm very excited to be here that's where we're only going do you know if a rapper has ever said the line i'm like a rooster i get every hennessy i'm sure somebody has we gotta look come on that's so good that's a good one no can i piggyback on this so so you guys know i try to pair drinks and i went with hennessy this week too but i did go to the liquor store and i did multiple trips past the alizé aisle and i was ready to get some alizé but i didn't want to be accosted by the people at total wine about why i

[31:00]was drinking that bright red liqueur what are you talking about alizé alizé alizé three for alizé n words like rob did you listen to this album what album are we listening to are we supposed to be listening now okay i think it's carol king i i did uh about two weeks ago i listened to young bucks welcome to um oh he's not welcome to nashville young buck who was on uh who's g unit and he's from tennessee and on the entire album i think he only rhymes tennessee one time which is incredible that shows you yeah as a rapper from tennessee how do you do that that's really good like you you would be tempted to go back over and over but right like i would be like what about chattanooga tennessee what about memphis tennessee what about knoxville tennessee and everyone would have a heaven see rhyme with it and i said exactly but don't don't judge me so anyway i'm that's that's me i'm very excited to be talking about this album and one of my favorite hennessy rappers now well by the time we get to it aaron we're gonna have about five

[32:00]minutes to talk about it so we better hurry this up um russ we're only going how's it going with you we're only going things are going really well aaron said he just went out with his family went out to dinner for the first time i actually went out to dinner with some friends for the first time and i actually met my good friend matt matt and a few of our other friends darren and chad and some of them brought their kids we went out and got a burger at this cool burger spot sandy's tavern it was great but then the night ended a little bit weird and i gotta call out a friend right now it turns out have you guys ever dined and ditched before dined and dashed have you ever gone and not paid your bill and left no whoa have you done it that's i gotta be the fifth on this one again as well have you done this within the last two hours of your life i've definitely paid the full bill but every once in a great while i think i've forgotten to leave a tip or something like that so yeah oh you don't want a tip man that's even worse man you gotta give him the tip yeah you do understand the burger

[33:03]i know you don't want him to get minimum wage man but like you have to tip him then like that's point part of the point well then again it gets a little worse even rob because this this is the sandy's bar an understatement oh no can i tell my version or do you yeah you tell your version was your waitress little orphan annie leo little orphan please sir can i have a tip man's like no so i'll let matt explain because there was a no no i want to hear you i want to hear your side of the story there was a little weird dynamic so we go to this burger place and it's in a city where matt grew up so it's possible maybe matt knows someone who works there knows friends of friends or something along those lines we're sitting there and matt realizes this our waitress is also from the city he grew up in she's a few years younger turns out she's married to kind of a friend of a friend or something along those lines they start talking and she asked matt's last name so they can try to connect the dots and matt refuses to give her his last name just like we do on the podcast and it we no one really understood the last name of matt

[34:03]why but she came back again they were talking i think there were three occasions where she kind of asked for the last name and he's like i'll write it down i'll give it to you kept not doing it not doing it not doing it so then our bills come matt and his son leave and the rest of us leave 15 20 minutes later and matt calls one of our friends and he says hey i think i didn't pay for my bill i've got too much money in my pocket i don't think i paid her oh so then we'd go in and we were the nice guys and so three of us walk back in which is probably like what's going on actually say hey um did that guy leave you our buddy chad was asking i think she was worried we overpaid her and she was we were going to try to take money back but essentially we said hey did that guy did that guy pay you and she wasn't really clear on it but so eventually we just gave her some money and said hey if he didn't pay you or whatever here you go but it made it super weird because matt was refusing to give his last name the whole night when we were at the dinner to the waitress and then he stiffed her matt speak up

[35:03]was this a lost love or a long lost love what's going on she's a little older she knows again yahoo euchre and his name is pile of shit three after that display so point five now matt you have told us about your tattoo that says milf hunter number one so tell us about this number one yeah number one but then when that account goes bad you're like up milf hunter number two better start it up tramp stamp works for matt though it's it's appropriately placed you know you get oh like aaron you're probably like yeah i'm from iowa oh we're in iowa i'm from uh you know i don't want to tell you from i'm from clear lake iowa oh well do you know bob who owns the liquor store you know you know you know there's it's kind of a minnesota thing i think right it's like oh you know so and so and so and so and so and so well you went to this gal right yeah this gal married this guy who i know i don't know him well but i know all of his friends really well like played basketball and football with them and it's like a perfect opportunity not to pay her i think yeah

[36:03]so that you know i'm like oh yeah well i know nate i know dwight you know i know all these people and oh you know and so and so still hanging out and all this stuff like that right and she's like what's your i was like matt you know and she's well matt who and i'm like and i it's one of those things where like there's no way if i give her my full name one she doesn't have her phone she's not gonna remember who i am and so like it was more like i was like i just want to get past this like you know yeah i know i know your husband all this stuff and all this is like it kind of turned weird because she kept asking and i was like oh well i'll text my other buddy and say hey tell so really weird what's this weird thing and then it kept getting weird are you a spy are you a spy are you somebody that we don't know who you are in the witness protection so so to not draw attention because you didn't want to deal with it too much you told her i'm not telling you my last name one of the things you can say that draws the most attention of anything he just kind of avoided the question he said oh i'll let you know later i'll write it down for you kept the i'm not gonna yell oh i'm tom brady you know like across the bar and so that everybody can hear you know what's

[37:01]going on i was like well just i'll you know when you come back we'll talk about it wait are you saying you're the tom brady of this bar that you'd be concerned i was just i was just watching looking at some tom brady memes of him of him making fun of aaron rogers and bryson dechambeau and they were he's fucking he's a great troll so man you never stood up for yourself did you did you stiffer on purpose with the bill no not on purpose but here's what happened so i think you know again this is kind of the first time we've been out and hanging out and everybody's kind of getting out together and our buddy chad was like a loyal listener one of our one of our dozens of listeners and so we go to this bar sandy's right and they got the old school um claw game okay so you go and i'm with now wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute yep is there a new school claw game that i'm not aware of aren't all the claw games almost exactly the same is there a new kind of claw that's well i mean they do have the ones that have like ipods and like and like you know electronics like on your purple link under claw game you'll find the new school claw game nipple clubs claw game

[38:04]claw game right and so eddie wants to play so i'm like all right well i've got no cash because who carries cash right and get take cash so i go to the atm and i'm like not her well you know i'll get some i'll get some cash out so eddie can play this game well then it doesn't take dollars to play the claw game you can't pay the waitress okay his kid walks out with like eight stuffed animals oh papa i do love these rubber balls we won and what did you say they should get a better job work harder yeah wow they want to make minimum wage for flipping burgers haha papa thank you for this plastic ball thing with a ring in it that i'm gonna lose in the car seat somehow your friend aaron already told me that minimum wage is high enough in this city oh sorry i figure if i just leave enough silence rob will just keep going is right you just let him go papa papa please

[39:02]so did your kid win in the claw game or did he learn the lesson that kids learn in the claw game of life's life's a bitch and then you die he did not always win but i had a robbie listen to the album that's sweet thank you i took out i took out 100 bucks in cash right and so out of the claw game what a claw game out of the atm and so i'm looking and i go to pay the bill and i was gonna pay her you know i'm a generous tipper i'm not like rob i'm a generous tipper usually okay so did you put all those labels on the album because that's what the other tipper did tipper gore oh nice yep i got it and so the people that are listening that was not a funny joke rob just did a close-up of his eyes in the zoo yeah man and really it's a close-up of his mustache man's rock hard after looking at those eyes that's his fetish you guys should have seen him when he was playing that claw game yeah it's really i just i i it's it's really easy to get through stories with you guys

[40:00]you know all right all right all right it's interesting you know and okay you guys ask questions and then i try to answer you're right you're right was this at a wendy's wendy's nuts at your face all right you've gone i'll try to get through this long story short i don't know paid with cash never pay with cash i always pay the card so usually write down a tip on that but it's like oh here just pay cash so they've got it i get home and i take cash out of my pocket i'm like i've got adding it up in my head and i'm like i got too much cash in my hand right now like i don't think i gave her what i thought i gave her you know as paying for my bill and the tip so i said hey will you just check and she does the thing where she just puts it all into one pile so she she says well i didn't you know i don't know i don't cash out to the end of the night so russell main man russell was nice enough to just float her float me 20 bucks and you know which is what i think i shorted her and so i appreciate it russell thanks for doing that

[41:00]thing man so you got it yeah the whole the whole bugger of the whole thing is that this guy this gal is married to a friend of a friend and all these guys and the last thing that i want to get you to go home and be like well that motherfucker didn't tip me you know and then she's telling all these guys who you know i was great friends in high school i talked to him now i don't see him all that often kind of a thing but that's the last thing i need is in richfield getting out that i'm a horrible tipper and it would make sense now that you didn't give her the last name for the first hour and then you stiffed her you know what though reputation is important that's why on all my first dates i go out and i claim that my name is andy so why do you make work for oh you know how my dad avoids that whole thing of people knowing him in town anytime he gets food to pick up he claims his name is tony his name is not tony so they know him they know him at all the disco ball shops he can't be like he's got to keep a low profile because he can't let people

[42:00]know like he's known at all the disco ball shops we'll be sitting there like a pot belly and it's like tony and he gets up and i go no yeah it's tony it's not you tony walks up he gets a sandwich he's like i'm tony i was like yeah we don't need it we don't need what this too much but i get this all the time like i live six blocks as the crow flies from where i grew up right and so like i'm over there yeah this t-ball thing all this stuff and i get it all the time oh are you is mike your dad kind of a thing you know your question and you never know i never know if it's good or bad you know sometimes it's like oh he's a great guy but sometimes you kind of get a side of like oh okay but mike's your dad you know that kind of a thing and so i he's that's what i try to avoid at all times i just you know and i think your dad maybe does the same thing but it's like you just never know where those conversations are going if you can avoid him at all costs just do it and move on are you so-and-so's dad yeah i am wow he's a real panty dropper sir i'm at my son's t-ball game and then they can do an argument about whether he's

[43:00]a dropper or a cider what was that one rob a cider a bowl of the cider i got a kid out the outfield he's got a batting helmet on backwards he can't do a thing okay another kid hit a kid up by accident another kid is choking on sunflower seeds i don't have time to deal with the panty drop hey rob all right start a brewery i would focus on apple drinks and one of them would be called hold of the cider oh russell you need to move into that chair that was a good job i will say this russell you could make money to make that uh whatever you were saying about a brewery by doing some penetrating penny trading oh i already screwed up the joke have we heard that you oh my god i thought that was man it's rolling going oh yeah no i was you know i'll be quick yeah i'll be quick because i i too was going to talk about the fact that went out uh with my main man russell and we had a burger and you know i think the one thing that i've learned

[44:03]through the um pandemic stuff is you know i can make a mean burger right like i think i make a better do you mean an average by mean uh that's good media that's nice smart guy joke make a mode burger equals mc ha ha yeah yeah close the face yeah so i i do think that you know it's one of those things but going to sandy's tavern tonight and having a burger at sandy's it's just unbelievably good burger i've realized our burger is way better than any burger yeah i realized yes restaurants will never go away everybody's so worried about all this stuff because it's just it's awesome to be out with friends having a beer eating a burger and eating a burger and having a burger and having a burger and having a burger and having a burger and talking face to face and stuff like that so i appreciate that so russell thanks for joining chad thanks for inviting us all out it was fun you guys missed out rob saw you it was the last weekend or a couple weekends ago it's just fun to hang out with people zoom meeting sucks

[45:00]all sorts all sorts of stuff like i can't wait are you quitting the podcast no is this your speech i haven't seen you guys in person since january of 2020 right and so when i'm gonna i'm gonna hug you all so hard i don't care i know you're gonna wrestle rob to the ground yeah i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it talked about it yep we talked yeah he has to kind of do the side hug because get a little movement but mad is sandy still a good strip club too or is that not is it not that great anymore that's it's it's all right hey kids these burgers are so good everybody welcome ginger to the stage get your grinning and drop your linen ginger don't kick-start my heart don't i like the burgers here what the burgers are good dancers really need to work on that panty to the side all right so we were talking about ilmatic by naz so this was really naz was a guy who grew up

[46:04]in queensbridge and if you uh matt recommended it to me but the netflix documentary ilmatic is so good i really i that was a great recommendation matt you are the king of the documentaries as always and i thought that really kind of summed up because you read about why people think this album is one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time but you don't understand why people think that until you watch that to me anyway i know aaron you're you were obsessed well you could listen to it rob that would be an option the you're heading for a spanking yeah get a little skate over there and it's not gonna be nice money rob last week and everyone laughed and now you think you can do it every week yeah i'm gonna drive home real fast how would you like that aaron that's right we're breaking up up oh jeez you're breaking my heart he's never gonna wear a sweater vest out with you again i broke up like that with one girl then one girl i broke up with you like okay i'm only gonna have sex with you three more times and that's it and i'm serious okay and that's fine or schedule them

[47:02]the best three seconds of her life don't ask before fourth time because it's not gonna happen three times what was your third fact about the album rob uh so my first fact was this was uh nas was first featured on a mc search album uh the i think it was called backyard barbecue or something like that barbecue live at the barbecue yeah live at the barbecue and they that's kind of how we got discovered this guy from mc search became nas's producer but this is the first like super producer album that was out there we've got large professor we've got dj premiere we've got q-tip from last week and pete rock all of those people were working on different songs which is why this album really sounds like it jumps you from song to you know it's not the same sound it's not like the chronic where it's like same west coast funk sound i think a lot of this is that bap bip style but you you have a very different sound on each one you can i was so excited about that because it's like a direct response to russell's criticism of low-end theory where he thought it was too much the same and

[48:01]it's like no here you go here's here's an album with four different producers every track is a little bit different i mean the premiere tracks are you know of a of a style but yeah i thought that was very cool when this came out but that's all right though it's all right and i want you to keep in mind listening to this album that this is a 20 year old kid making this album talking about life and death so are you guys ready to get into ilmatic let's get into it yeah all right i'm always ready first off we have represent i don't know have you heard about the good book the first part is called the genesis yeah and when i saw this song was named the genesis it made me think about did you guys know any kids who had both super nintendos and sega genesis's were they like i was a sega guy i was a sega i was one of the other right everyone was one of the other did you know i knew one kid that had both and i was like your life rules and it did it really did i think big well probably

[49:04]puffy i think puffy ripped off well biggie's entire first album ripped off ilmatic uh but the first track on on ready to die rips off the genesis where it's this whole thing of you know how did he get started they took it further uh but uh i think why is it a rip-off explain a little more so this this didn't seem like your typical song for an opening track what why did they rip it off or what do you guys think the opening track here there's a clip from a movie to start with and then the soundtrack of that movie is the beat in the music behind him when he's talking about how he's getting started and if you remember that um biggie one was about how he got started from birth on to what all the way to going to prison right that was why yeah biggie biggie's goes all the way from birth you know but it's this sort of sound collage you know it's this sort of sound collage that's the way it's going to go from birth to prison you know but it's this sort of sound collage that's the way it's going to go from birth to prison the one on biggie's album takes him all the way from birth up to the reason the release of his album this one is more broad sort of the birth of hip-hop but you do hear um nas's verse from live at the barbecue where he says when i was 12 i went to hell for i went to what's he say i went

[50:00]to talks about snuffing jesus but um he cuts out jesus on this one but anyway yeah it they're playing snippets of nas's previous stuff and showing how nas got to where he's at so i think it's great i think it's just the stage i think it's nice and now we have gail gangsters dj premiere produced new york state of mind i'll be kicking i'm like scarface his lyrics i enjoyed listening to i know you think i didn't but i did no it's so dense it's and this is i'm gonna go ahead and talk because i'll talk all night about this one but to me this is the direct line he's the he's the he's the heir to rakim's throne as the great lyrical rapper and he's taken all of rakim's internal rhyme schemes and multi-syllabic rhymes and doing everything rhymes with itself he's doing really complex rhymes right out the gate and to me it goes you know rakim nas to be honest eminem was really influenced by this stuff and did it really well

[51:03]and then kendrick and so those are the guys who really took you know rhyming to another level and were really serious about their craft i mean jay-z too um but yeah this is like i gotta say i feel i feel really smart with this podcast because i did listen to this album and think oh this is what influenced kendrick like i could hear it and i was like yes i'm like a smart music guy now you know what i mean like i say smart things you're yeah man so we say all the time it makes you makes you better that's right thank you very much i appreciate that all right let's get into life's a bitch again this is a 20 year old oh this is az i bought an az solo album just based on this verse this guy's eaten for his whole life just based on this verse i don't know do you guys remember i i listened to a a podcast now where these guys are obsessed

[52:07]with trying to live longer right because like they're getting existential about like what is life and what is death like do you guys do anything just to try to live longer like does that every once in a while i think like oh i should try to live i should try to live longer and then i'm like man it seems like a lot of work don't play this my funeral by the way in an ironic way please do a few push-ups here and there i've gotten into pull-ups i usually get vaccinations of penicillin after questionable dates and i hope that helps it that should do it that should do it actually one thing i don't know if you guys notice this but there's kind of a trumpet at the end of this and do you know that it's it's nasa's dad that's playing the trumpet on this track do you guys know that yeah well after watching the movie i figured it out but yeah it took me a while but yeah i thought that was pretty cool and it made me start thinking it turns out that father's day is coming up about a week after we're releasing pay attention to the date very smart smart thing to do i love it your lessons rob and what i wanted

[53:03]to do is i thought you know there's not a ton of compilations with parents and kids on songs there's a handful but i figured maybe what we could do is celebrate father's day by going over the five greatest father son songs of all time yeah let's get into the list i can't think of one off the top of my head well i don't know if all these are like good songs or not but it's as good as that you didn't listen you didn't listen most of them i think are actually pretty sad but russell i've been searching online i've been searching uh mother and stepson compilation and i'm getting a lot of different things than the songs i think you're gonna play i'll send you all my purple legs okay i'll send you all my purple legs tonight i don't think yes you should first up we got to start with one of matt's favorites this is neil young how about old man this is a great song about fathers and sons right i don't know if they're great songs but it's at least about fathers and sons this is actually uh i mean this actually plays right into

[54:05]the theme but it's actually about he when neil young was gonna go and just uh he so he he went and he kind of went off the went off the deep end and said i'm just gonna go back and live off the land and so he went and rented uh like a shack from a farmer out i think it's in california all right and so he's just driving around this 80 year old guy this guy doesn't know who neil young is right he's like how in the world can you afford all this stuff right and you know he says you know old man look i'm just i'm a lot like you are you know i just want to live off the fat of the land and go and so it wasn't about his dad but it was about a father figure from him and so are you saying that old guy wrote that song that's crazy the old guy's like wow i'm a lot like you but russ i'm gonna bring this back i'm gonna bring it back to father's day russell because i think that there is a ton of people at least that me you know i think of this gets a little corny but like baseball coaches and things like that where you learn a lot of fatherly advice and things from right and so that's why i've always liked

[55:03]that song because it's not actually his dad but it's somebody who was a father figure for him and i think you know you can take so much from people and kind of shape it into your life so i i that song is a great song and we can delete all this if you want and i'm sorry i ruined your list russell oh no no it's re-emphasizing it yeah man i am so glad that you think i'm a father figure to you i think that's an honor that you're that i'm going to carry around that you look up to me and say wow i'm a lot like you know i'll send you a trophy that says thanks thanks dad yeah spank him like you would if you're a stepfather oh no videos you were watching earlier you want a fatherly tip from me i would say check out uh pull it to the cider the new cider i have coming out from my brewery i forget how i'm paying for it but i think it was something link what was the thing we had on the sleeve i can't remember anymore well alan jackson never taught his kid how to pull it to the cider but he did teach his kid i think how to drive so this is alan jackson drive i thought that's what way

[56:03]down on the chattahoochee was about this is a great father son song right like learning how to drive a car to drive a boat with your dad this is a fantastic i don't know this one i'm gonna have to go back and listen i do love alan jackson he's got a great voice my dad reminded me of a story the other day where he was like you know when you were younger once we were at a soccer practice and a parent came up to me and said excuse me sir your son has just pushed my son from behind and my dad turned to me and said rob did you push his kid from behind and i said no i didn't that was no i didn't do that my dad goes i'm sorry my son didn't do that but he did eat that cake mix but he did eat that cake yeah he told me that story three months ago and i was like dad i was lying to you i definitely pushed that kid there's a 100 percent of chance i

[57:00]and then i lied to you and then you said no i believe my son and i now realize he did it to like make me feel guilty because he knew i was lying and so he switched it around on me he knew that when you were 41 years old this would all come back on your podcast feel even more guilty yeah yeah yeah the next song on the list we need a little hip-hop on this list too and i'm gonna go minneapolis style one of the biggest minneapolis hip-hop groups atmosphere the song is called yesterday and it's about a guy who's kind of missing his dad check this out it doesn't matter this is more than beautiful piano right you get to see you out the corner of yesterday was that you look just yeah and can make beats man my imagination might do take a breath have you guys ever seen atmosphere in concert matt you're a first i have not i've got a friend brianna who i went to high school with who's obsessed and always posted about and it seems like a great show i should try to i saw him three or four times i also one time went up to talk to slug at delano's and i was like oh my god i'm gonna

[58:00]like hey i like your album that was it what was that what was that song called russell yesterday have you guys seen that movie where a guy wakes up in a world where atmosphere doesn't exist and he writes all the atmosphere songs and he becomes a mid-level hip-hop star and everybody is like wow you're so great where did you come up with all these it's so good god i love that movie yesterday was like today i was a big atmosphere fan back in the day i owned uh what and he walked up and said what i was like hey young man i'm atmosphere santa come sit on my lap and tell me what you love about my music i was like hey i like your album that's it wow what a fucking nerd you are yep that is correct what was he doing at delano's in the middle of the day like what was he doing there drinking a heineken just like me just like a regular old dude drinking heineken at delano's in the middle of the day yeah why do people go and drink in the middle of the day let me think

[59:02]you guys both have problems i mean that's why well i bet when when aaron sunny reaches about 14 they'll be at the bar drinking heineken's together they're having a conversation between father and son so the next song on the list is yusuf islam or cat stevens this is father and son you guys know this one oh geez my band played this song the band i was in that i played bass in sorry it's amazing it's beautiful makes you almost brings you to tears right it's gonna just make me this is incredible russell we've gone we've gone down a real path here to listen my son didn't push that kid from behind you are totally wrong but he did eat the chocolate cake mix he did do that you know what i'm gonna tape him when i see him this summer i'm gonna tape him and i'm gonna tape an interview with him about the cake mix and you're gonna see what i'm putting up with horseshit by the way do you think it's offensive to call him cat stevens now

[60:04]remember what a joke it was people were like oh ha ha it's not cat stevens anymore it's his weird islamic name but looking back like that's super nasty right if he wants to change his name we should respect that i think calling anyone by the wrong name is is is offensive ryan that's a funny joke no that's a funny joke no that's a good one rosie i get it when aaron is not able to laugh at his own joke there's no joke to be had no you gotta let it breathe you let it breathe rosie i was gonna say you did an excellent job of letting it breathe let you gotta let it marinate inside there and let it come to everybody to be fair the unfair thing with this is that matt doesn't laugh at jokes rob doesn't have a loud laugh at jokes and if i'm too dumb to get it rosie's got no one to help him out so rosie's kind of at a disadvantage rob and matt you have two people that will laugh out loud rosie's only got one and if i'm not smart enough he's fucked listen you know russell

[61:00]let's get back to your list because speaking of um no wait speaking of letting it read here we go let's get back to these stepmother son compilations all right the next song of the stepmother stepson was that the last rolling stones album we did let it breed or no that was a parody movie i saw on a website never mind a website the different scenes were called you can't always hump what you want there was let it breed of course the titular track of the compilation that i watched there was also what was the opening song on that oh um there's also give me no kimmy felter kimmy felter was the first opening part of let it breed the alternative rolling stones adult x x x parody i watched feel her the only thing that's uglier than rob's comedy routine right now is the song cats in the cradle by ugly kid joe i'm

[62:04]going with the ugly kid joe cover of cats in the cradle this is about the father and son yeah father's too busy for the father and son and the father's too busy for the father and son and the son and then the son's too busy for the father check this one out they didn't change the name of country honk they kept that the same they didn't have to change that name you guys remember the song this was so big for a minute right yeah it's crazy is this a little guy that hung out with kid rock is that ugly no joe that was uncle what no that was a little guy yeah a little ugly kid joe i feel like a good kid joe was kind of like a skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the skid row knockoff i was thinking about the sk

[63:13]How about you? Off to the claw game, Papa. And the old school one this time. Son, why can't you talk right? You screw up words sometimes. Sorry, Papa. I have found that I'm a semi-aggressive driver. And I don't think I'm unsafe, but I'm semi-aggressive. And I'll talk out loud more to myself. What is this clown doing? Things like that. And I got to watch that. Eddie's getting pretty good. Oh, look at this clown. Things like that. So I have found that, not to get too deep. This is not a deep thing, but my aggressive driving, I hope my kids don't pick that up. That's not good. You know it's bad when your little kid says, GBH 6KK, I'm going to look up where you live and come kill you. You're like, I can't be saying that in front of the kids.

[64:03]Aaron, how about you? Other than being funnier than Rob on a podcast, what do you hope your kid does not learn in the future? I know. I've heard. I've heard from my mom that when I was a kid, my grandpa gave her a book that was called Raising the Unhurried Child. And my kid is the most unhurried kid. You cannot move him along for anything. He does things at his pace. He will not do things to anyone else's pace, which I think that one's kind of okay. The thing that he definitely got from me that is not great is that he cannot fucking find anything. He'll say, where's my paper airplane? And it will literally be right behind his heel. And I'm terrible at finding shit. So that's the one I hope he grows out of. It's like when Aaron's at the top. And he goes, where's that strap? I thought I was going to bring that up here. Well, it turns out all my Father's Day songs are actually really sad. So I apologize to all our listeners for that. That is what it is. Everybody get your tissues out. And what if this was the little guy singing to Kid Rock? And Kid Rock is the dad he's singing to.

[65:01]This is little kid C or whatever. This is little Joe. My name is Joe C. And he's singing to Kid Rock. I want to be just like you, Dad. Kid Rock's like, you already are. He's like, what the fuck? Actually, I reversed that. That song is cool as a parent, by the way. All right. Nice list, Russell. Good list, Russell. Let's get into. Cheers to you guys. Enjoy your Father's Day in about a week and a half after this comes out. Oh, yeah. I love Father's Day because for Mother's Day, we get the gift of cooking meals for her and doing whatever she says. And for Father's Day, I get the gift of cooking meals on the grill for her and doing whatever she says. It's really fun. Hey. Honey, please get me another grill mitt, please. I only have 10,000 from every year that you've got them for me. Wow. Another massage coupon. I can't believe it. What a huge shock for Father's Day. Oh, another apron. By the way, I don't ever wear aprons, but I have 10 of them. Thanks for Father's Day. Love it. Are we getting paid for this therapy session? Oh, thanks for the amazing surprise birthday party for my 41st birthday.

[66:03]For your birthday, I will record a podcast and forget the game. Poor Rob. Poor Rob. You know those posters when these guys come up and dunk the mini basketballs behind the people because they got posterized? Russell just posterized you, Rob. I can't believe my parents had to get me these VR goggles and my wife didn't get them for me. To be fair, we weren't recording a podcast. I was just editing one with no headphones on. So you heard the same loop over and over of like, shut up, Aaron. And then I'd go back, shut up, Aaron. And I'd go back like, shut up, Aaron. I was like, oh, no, I cut too much. Hey, now shut up, Aaron. I was like, no, I got to cut more. That sounds like there's a lot of stuff on the internet now about A-Rods. A-Rods sexual proclivities. Like, I wonder if Rob likes to just like listen to himself say shut up, Aaron, when he's trying to. Is this because you've searched A-Rods sexual proclivities? Question mark. Show me now. Signed, Aaron. No, this was this came up in another group. Well, full disclosure, I'm part of multiple group chats. I'm not. You guys are not my only group chat.

[67:00]And it came up in another group chat of mine about his peccadillos. But we should talk about that. What's your hashtag, your screen name for that one? Juiced balls? Yeah. That's it. Oh, good. All right. I've got. What am I on? The world is yours. World is yours. Wonder years. Yeah. It's mine. It's mine. It's mine. Pete Rock. I mean, you can hear this. There's way more scratching on this one. Like, it's a totally different sound from some of these other songs. Right. I noticed the scratching, too. You know who else has done scratching on their albums? Back. Back. Famous for having two turntables. But he also has a DJ who actually won. Once won the DMC U.S. DJ Championship 1996 DJ champion. This is DJ Swamp. Rob, pull up DJ Swamp doing a solo at a Beck concert. Oh, I want to hear some scratches. So I got to ask you guys, when it comes to scratching records with a championship DJ,

[68:05]who does it better? Beck did it better. I can't vote against Pete Rock. That's a hard one. Nope. You did, Aaron. Now, if you see him in a bar, you go up and say, Hey, we like your albums. Be like, Hey, did you say I wasn't a great DJ? I know who you are. You're famous enough. He gets mad at you. He comes up. Hey, I really like your podcast. You're like, get the fuck out of here. The world is yours is the first. So I didn't, I never realized as a kid, what, like, what a big fan. And Russell, we talked a little bit about how much, whether we had listened to this album as kids or not. And I didn't get into it until, like I said, I was in my twenties and I was on my, you know, journey to learn everything I could about hip hop. Shaquille O'Neal was quoting this album all the time, right? He's got. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's got a tattoo that says Twism. The world is mine. Clearly that's ripped off from here. Remember when Shaquille O'Neal said Vince Carter is half man, half amazing. And you thought like, that's the coolest shit ever.

[69:00]Like, wow, that's so cool. You would say that about someone. Nas said that like that was a Nas line. So Shaq was always, I mean, kudos to Shaq because he was a rap fan. Shaq also said, I'm a rooster and I'm going to get every hen I see. I was like, damn, that's a good line, Shaq. No, I did. I did Google that, Rob. I can't, I haven't found that anywhere yet. See, it's not too late, Rob. Not too late to record your own rap album. I'm DJ Swamp 2. Swamping it up. Swampy style. I don't know about that last part. DJ Swamp 2 is good. Swamping it up. Swampy style. Gets long. Hard to play a drop during that. It's DJ Swamp 2. Ricker, ricker, ricker. Kidding. Swampity, swampy style. Then you lose the beat. Speaking of losing the beat, halftime. Man, I thought I was the disaster on that last one. I don't know what you're talking about. I'll be on a manhunt. Rob in the street. Are those sleigh bells in the background of this one? Are those sleigh bells? What's going on there? Let's see. I'm going to try to enhance. It does sound like sleigh bells, doesn't it?

[70:01]Enhance. Yeah, it sounds a lot like sleigh bells. That's good. You're right, Russell. It's nice because this is the end of the first side, right? Which is the 40 side. And then the next side is the 41st side. I assume that's a reference to where he lived or grew up. I don't know that. But it's fun because we have people who are 40 and 41 on this podcast. So it kind of fits our podcast. One thing I love about this album is it's kind of at the tail end of cassette tape rap. And this definitely would have come out on cassette. You know, he makes the comment in New York State of Mind about never put me in your box if your shit eats tapes. And there's so many, you know, it's sort of like a trope in rap music about rewinding the tape to hear the lyrics. And this is like the quintessential people wore out their tape because they had rewinded to hear what he said. Because he said so many things. And if you didn't hear it the first time, you had to rewind it. So I like to think about that at the end of the first side. Let's say you were using a system like Amazon Music that doesn't let you rewind.

[71:02]And maybe that's why you didn't get a lot of the lyrics of the album. That's cool, too, right? Maybe you were like grading papers also while listening to this album. So maybe the lyrics didn't stick out as much. Rob, was there anything worse than having to return those VHS tapes to Blockbuster when you didn't rewind them and they had to see exactly where you left that VHS tape? Yeah. Yeah, that old lady's pumped to see where Rob blank left the showgirls VHS tape at every time he returned it. Yeah. What the heck? It's just James Bond getting out of the tub. That's weird. Why would he keep it there? It's just like, oh, he's rented True Lies a hundred times. And every time it comes back, we turned on the underwear scene. Jamie Lee Curtis in the bedroom with Arnold. What a sicko. A trip down memory lane. All right, let's take it down. That is a trip down memory lane. Memory lane. I love this beat. I like this one, too. Is this a premiere beat?

[72:02]I don't know. I told you guys I'm not going to do any research. You said, okay. These are definitely, this also reminded me a lot of when you think about Voodoo. These are the kinds of drums that D'Angelo was talking about where he wanted them to be as far behind the beat as possible and samples not entirely lining up. And this was the, you know. Matt, you watched the Nas documentary. What makes this album or what makes Nas so influential or what did you learn from the documentary that's super interesting? Well, go to the next song because I think One Love by Q-Tip. Q-Tip just basically gushes over the lyricism in most of everything that we're not breaking any ground here. The word that comes up over and over in that documentary, Arnold Russell, is honest and catching the feeling of New York in 91 to 92. You know, like that time. Everybody's just like, this is the most honest stuff I've ever heard because it wasn't super gangster. It wasn't super gangster. It wasn't super gangster. It wasn't super gangster. It wasn't super gangster. It wasn't super gangster. It was kind of like hyperbolic in that way.

[73:02]And at the same time, it wasn't like kind of more meta, like a tribe called Quest. It was like, what was he was really seen as a 20-year-old on the street. So this is like letters to his buddies that are in jail, right? And like this line, Q-Tip calls out specific. He says, I heard, you know, congratulations. You know, you got a son. He said, I heard he looks like you. Why don't your lady write you? Right. And basically, he's saying this is Q-Tip is taking that one line. And saying this is essentially the struggle that every black man in New York is going through right now. Right. You got cops coming at you from one side. You've got baby mama from the other. You got family trying to keep all this stuff together. All right. So now you've got this great son, but now you can't see him. Now, you know, baby mom is not bringing the kid to see you. Nobody's coming to see him. You know, and all this stuff. And it's just perpetuating this kind of this cycle of not allowing families to be together. And again, there's so much other stuff to talk about on top of this. Right. Like. You know, why jail begin with all that.

[74:00]So we're not trying to get any of that. But it's like. Or there's the idea of the Queensbridge projects to begin with. Like what the point of them was. Yes. And why they exist the way they do. Like that's that's a whole systemic issue. Correct. You know. And so he was just saying that as a 20 year old coming up with all of these battles that are going on. There was nobody quite as honest or quite articulate the honesty of what was going on at that time. And that's why everybody just saw him as, you know, this guy is just great. He's speaking. For us. We can't. Nobody's come out and said stuff like this before. And so that's that's what I think drew everybody to Nas, especially as a young kid saying he's way ahead of his years, if you will. Interesting. One time for your mind. I love this kind of this is almost like a. Is this like a South chop and screw kind of sound? It's the slowest tempo in the whole album, right? Yeah. This is down with Aaron's BPMs. Yes. This is like, you know, like.

[75:01]You're at your apartment by yourself, BPM, so you can take all night if you want to. You could really like you don't have to hurry because you got to get to work and your kids might wake up and see you in the living room because you're in an apartment. This is like, take your time. I don't remember now if this is the this might be the song that has the line about richer than a slipper made Cinderella fella. And I love it. I love that this album is still straddling two time periods. There's still that just slight. There's a tiny bit of like corniness. It's like the rippity rapping of the 80s. You know, even when he says like, you know, relax and strive. When I was young, I was a fan of the Jackson five. He just throws that in because he knows Jackson five or like rhymes with relax and strive. And, you know, this one we talked about made Cinderella richer than a slipper made Cinderella fella. It's cool because he's such an incredible technical rapper, but he's still got one foot in that old school 80s thing of like, well, this is a little bit party music. It's a little bit like, let's make a joke.

[76:01]Let's have fun. But he's also talking about some serious shit. And he's doing that's what he grew up in complex rhymes. He grew up in that party scene. Yes, right. Yeah. I mean, that's a seven, eight, nine year old. Yeah, right. I can tell you as somebody who has made two hit rap songs in as many weeks, it is hard to come up with any internal rhymes. Like that's exactly the hardest thing. It's easy to be like, I saw my man named Russ. I saw him on a really big bus. But to be like, you know, I didn't want him to come to harm holding his arm. Like that's a harder thing to come up with. Although I just did it there. No problem. So I just think Rob has rhyme dot com or whatever he wants to pull up on the Internet. Like these guys had to come up with all this stuff just off the top of the head. It's crazy, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. This is one of my favorite on the albums represents. I like this one. Aaron, what's your favorite track on the album? That's a hard one for me. Aaron, let me ask you to use your question. Is this your first or second favorite rap song that features a background from the Nutcracker?

[77:05]Ballet first number one. I mean, it's probably life's a bitch because I love that sample. I love how I love the smooth sample. But Russell, that's an interesting question. I've never thought about that because I almost always if I listen to this album and it had been a while, I'd like I had this on CD. I used to play it all the time. I almost always listen to it all the way through or pick up where I left off. That's a tough question. But for me, it's probably life's a bitch because I love AZ's verse. I love the beat. And I love. I love how Nas picks up straight from AZ, but represent the drums are hard. I love the vibes. A minus. All right. It ain't hard to tell. I mean, the Michael Jackson sample here is hard. I love it. Yes. Very good. That's very cool.

[78:00]What do you think, Matt? What do you think? This is a closing song on an album. I like, you know, this album. It's not one of my favorite rap albums, man. I'm trying to figure out why. And, you know, as we're going, as we've gone through this a couple of times, I think, I don't know. Rose, you just talked about, you know, it seems like DJ Premier is kind of your guy that you've liked more than the others on this. And I think all the large professor tracks are the ones that I like. And I don't know. I think I got to dig in a little deeper. I don't know if I will, but I think if I dug in a little deeper. And so I just, I don't, I don't know. I've been trying to figure out why I don't like it as much as other ones. And I think maybe it's a little too serious for me. You know, maybe it's just a little too heavy. I think, you know, I think I had that take. I think I had that take with the Kendrick album. And so I don't know. I don't know why it just doesn't hit me as much as some of the other ones. That would explain why your favorite CD of all time is called Circus Music and those who love it. And you can hear some circus music playing in the background right now.

[79:00]This is Matt's favorite music. It's not serious at all. It's for the clowns. He loves it. This is one that I listened to so much when I was really focused on, like, I got to learn about hip hop. And hip hop should be an art form and a craft. And it should be serious. And that's. That's when I was really diving into it. And now, up until this last week, I don't put it on much because, yeah, it's not. I never thought of it as fun this week because of the nostalgia and because we just heard low end theory. And I think there's such a good segue from low end theory to this one. It was fun to me. But for a long time, yeah, it wasn't one I put on. So, Matt, I don't disagree, man. It is heavy. It's kind of like when I answered the podcast one time, we watched a little bit of an episode of Who's the Boss? And we're like, oh, we thought this was fun, but it's really not very fun. The themes in Who's the Boss? It's like there's a lot of loneliness, right? There's a lot of being left behind. Hey, it was fun for me when you guys dropped off that Zoom call. Oh, Mona. He was an ex-baseball player. He got cut. Now, you don't know what he's going to do with his life. He's trying to provide for his daughter.

[80:01]Mona, help me push this couch in the van. That's the Who's the Boss. Thin line between Tony Danza and Hulk Hogan right now. No, no, no. That's the Who's the Boss. You're walking a fine line. That's the Who's the Boss Buffalo Bill from. The Silence of the Lambs combination. He pushes Mona into the van. And then she rubs a lotion on her skin. Okay, so that's all going to get cut. So I hope that we save that for a later segment called Things Rob Should Have Said But Thinks Is Funny. This time, not mentoring Kirby Puckett. All right, let's get into our rating system. I'll edit it out. It's time for everybody's favorite podcast show. The Patent and the Popular. Back to the Patent. This is 44th on the list. Illmatic by Nas. Is this album on the list? 44. Is that a rolling well-toned? It's perfect. It should be right there. We love it. Is this a rolling groan? Is that a groan? That's not a groan, right?

[81:00]That was a yawn. Try it. You can do a better groan than that. Is this a rolling groan? Do I hear that again? There we go. I never need to hear that again. I never need to hear that again. Things that make you go. That's a groan. Is this a rolling groan? Is this a rolling groan? Wait, Rosie was muted. One more time. He's got to hear that. Did you love this so much it made you rolling moan? Ooh. So is this a rolling groan? Or a rolling moan? Or a rolling moan? Aaron, what do you think? Oh, it's for me. Okay, great. Well, I think this is one of my favorite rap albums of all time. It is, to me, the best rap album of all time. Hey, everybody. I'm Bill Clinton. I'd rank this album rolling blown. You're doing so well. You're doing so well. You made it so far, Rob.

[82:00]Rob, you made it so far. You made it so far. It's just about as good as it gets when you talk about an MC over just the right beats at the right time. Also, as I've talked about, it's when hip-hop was still, at least hip-hop media, was still really New York-centric. This was highly anticipated. Everyone was waiting for this album because of the great music. It was a combination of MC and producers. He 100% nailed it. He never reached these heights again. I don't think anyone has. For me, I feel like I've been calling too many things rolling boned. But now, listening to this, I just, I'm not sure. And I love Biggie. I love him, rest in peace. I will always love him. But I don't know how this could be so far below ready to die. I think they're so close to one another and they're sort of companion pieces. So I don't know what I would knock off for this to move up, but I got to call this rolling bone because it's got to be, closer to ready to die. Which one is it? If I think it should be higher on the list, but a higher number. Rolling, rolling, rolling bone.

[83:01]I think at 44. Land the plane. I think this is rated a little too high for me personally. I understand why it's where it's at. I personally think that Outkast fits my ballywick a little better. So Aquium's coming up here and a few others. You know, some of the Jay-Z, the Blueprint, things like that. I think those, me personally, they're a little better, but I'll just say it's rolling well-toned at 44. I think it's, you know, top 50 album of all time. That's a good spot for it. All right, Russell, what do you think of Illmatic? I really enjoyed this album. Aaron mentioned it before. I kind of thought the last album we listened to, Tribe, was a little bit one note, kind of the same thing over and over. And I think Aaron mentioned this. There's a lot more. I thought there was a lot more variety with this. I loved kind of the, the rap over the jazz. I thought it was super cool. Nas seems like a great storyteller. So there's a lot of things I really liked. I think for me,

[84:01]I said this last week, for rap and hip hop for me, I still love the things I grew up with. And I don't remember being into Nas when I was a kid. I remember being into Dre, Snoop Dogg, the Humpty Dance, those types of things. And so it's hard for me to have the same appreciation for this album when I wasn't into it as a kid, when there were these other hip hop artists that I was super into. So I really enjoyed it. I thought it was really interesting from a musical perspective, great stories. But for me, it's rolling grown by just a little bit. The correct answer is this is a rolling across the HUD zone. Guys, when I, if I move my camera and I showed you right outside my window, guess what you'd see? It's Queensbridge. It's right outside my window. I can see it right from here. Hey, actually, Rob, though, Aaron and I didn't see that because we chose not to come to your birthday. I saw it. Yeah, Jenny pointed that out actually at the party and she said it to a lot of people. And she made everybody boo you. And I said, good. They should be booed. And Matt booed the loudest.

[85:00]Next up, we've got an album that answers the question. Does Russ have the look? This is Sign of the Times by Prince. Oh, no. Oh, Prince. Oh, you guys, I'm going to, I'm going to really be unbearable on that one. This needs to be a good episode next week because 75% of our downloads come from Minnesota, which is weird because only 50% of our podcast shoots loads in Minnesota. When you want it. I wrote that down. 63% of all statistics are just made up. Rob, just when I thought you couldn't be any dumber, you go and pull something like that and totally redeem yourself. I mean, I'm not currently, but I have. Did it better. I heard that for this next album, Prince just had a sign that said one o'clock. Sign of the Times. If I made that joke on a Yahoo message board during a card game, I would have to change it. I would have to change it. I would have to change the pile of shit

[86:00]three by tomorrow morning.